Diane Michael

LABOUR HISTORY ON FILM

The History of the Great Australian Lockout in 50 Minutes

In 1929 one of the darkest chapters in Australian industrial history was written in blood and bitterness on the northern coalfields of New South Wales ... it took 15 months for the enemies to fight themselves to a standstill.

Richmond Main Colliery, 1929 - more than 1500 men were employed here.
Source: DMR, Singleton

These words introduce the newly completed historical television documentary, LOCKOUT, which tells the story of Australia's most violent industrial conflict, a conflict that sent shock waves across the country.

Five years ago, I was sitting in a pub in Cardiff, NSW, with fellow producer, Greg Hall when we first heard the story of the Battle for Rothbury from a recent acquaintance. We were amazed that such a story, although common knowledge locally, was not well known outside the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales, and that the Battle for Rothbury was itself only one day in a 15-month-long struggle by more than 10,000 miners and their families in 1929–30. We felt compelled to research the story further and as we did so, we began to appreciate its relevance to history and to the current industrial climate.

For Greg and myself, what began as research into the background to the Great Australian Lockout became a passion to make a television documentary which would allow this story to reach a wide audience: children and adults, lovers of history and politics, students of industrial relations.

For those unfamiliar with the story of the Lockout – in a nutshell:

The 1929–30 Lockout occurred when mine owners in the Northern Coalfields of NSW, decided with the support of the NSW State Government to reduce miners wages by 12.5 per cent and strip them of other hard-won benefits. When the Miners Federation wouldn't agree to these terms the mine owners locked the gates on the most productive mines in NSW. They remained closed for 15 months.
    In October 1929, eight months into the Lockout, the incumbent federal conservative government went to the polls on industrial reform and lost, Prime Minister Stanley Bruce lost his seat (the only Prime Minister to do so, thus far). Following the polls the newly elected Labor government betrayed the Miners Federation when it failed to end the lockout as promised. This caused a rift that lasted more than 50 years.
    As negotiations continued to fail, the NSW conservative government decided to open the Hunter Valley Rothbury mine with 'non-union labour'. After a series of meetings in the Northern Coalfields on Sunday 15 December 1929, an estimated 6,000 men (including many World War I veterans) marched overnight to Rothbury to confront the scabs. On Monday 16 December at 5.30am they were met by police at the mine gates. After some men attempted to break through the fence, police opened fire. During one episode of gun fire, a miner, Norman Brown, was fatally shot, another miner collapsed and died, and many were wounded. This confrontation became known as the Battle for Rothbury.
    A compromise was finally reached in May 1930 and the men returned to work in early June that year. They accepted the original 12.5 per cent reduction in pay, but did not lose any other benefits. While average wages during the Depression were cut by 20 per cent throughout Australia, the miners never fell below the 12.5 per cent Lockout level.

Greg and I are producers with an appreciation of storytelling via the visual medium. But we are not historians or teachers, and the prospect of depicting the 15-month Lockout was daunting. This event was a result of many different factors: some were global like the Great Depression; some cultural like the migration of many miners from the UK following the Great Strikes and Lockouts there; some industrial like the Miners Federation struggle for better work conditions; some economic like the glut of coal; and some political like the relationships between colliery owners and the political parties.

As producers, our biggest dilemma was how to distil these global, economic, political, cultural and industrial complexities into 50 television minutes and how to include the daily struggle of 10,000 men and boys, their families and their communities to give the program life and meaning. We didn't want to make just a record of events; we wanted our audience to 'feel' and understand how this conflict impacted on those involved.

After our initial research we made contact with Paddy Gorman, National Media Director of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), who proved to be the lynchpin in moving our plans forward. A relationship was established with the Mineworkers Trust which allowed for the research and development of a television documentary that would preserve the history and integrity of the Lockout.

It was through this relationship with Paddy and the Mine Workers Trust that we gained access to an as yet unpublished work by mining historian and academic, Alan Murray – Working Class Heroes: the Great Australian Lockout. This document minimised our research time because Alan had researched the period in great detail and had also interviewed many of the participants in the event. Alan's original work, commissioned by the CFMEU and funded by the Mine Workers Trust, was structured into 12 distinct chapters. His subsequent 40-page synopsis provided the basis of the story that was to become the television documentary, LOCKOUT.

Production shot from LOCKOUT,
September/October 2006 at Kurri Kurri Recreation scenes were shot in the Cessnock Local Area of NSW, using many original locations and many descendents of the men who mined the area.
Photo: Jason Van Genderen, LOCKOUT Director

As co-producer Greg Hall put it:

We always knew that this piece of history didn't need any additional contrivance to make it compelling television – it had all the drama, passion and hardship to capture the imagination – it is a great story begging to be told.

Paddy also provided access to the few remaining veterans of the Lockout – extraordinary characters, living historians, who cooperated fully with the project.

One of those veterans was Jim Comerford. Jim was born in 1913, and his family migrated to Australia from Scotland in 1922. He began work in the mines at 14 and was a young man of 15 when the Lockout took place. His career as a militant activist and union leader was determined by his involvement in the Lockout and the events at Rothbury – they were vivid memories that remained with him throughout his lifetime. Jim's early aspirations for journalism provided him with the motivation to record his memories of the Lockout and over the years he amassed a vast collection of material. That collection is now housed at the Edgeworth David Museum in Kurri Kurri and it proved an invaluable resource in developing the documentary.

Jim's work as a writer and reviewer on historical, industrial and political matters has been published throughout Australia and overseas. Interviews with Jim and his wife Mabel were recorded in September 2005, when they were 92 and 88 respectively. (Jim died in November 2006, aged 93. He was an amazing man and we were privileged to have met him.)

Another remarkable character we interviewed was Jack O'Shea, who was 20 at the time of the Lockout and still lives in Cessnock. Now 97, Jack provided a different dramatic perspective for these events with the part he played in the Battle for Rothbury. Local Kurri Kurri identity (Edward) Coogan Frame (89) was also interviewed. His brothers Merv and Mick, and his father Edward, were involved with events at that time and were at Rothbury on that fateful day. Coogan has also been dedicated to recording this history. [As we were going to press, we were sad to learn of the death of the two remaining veterans of the Lockout. Coogan Frame died 31 March, aged 89 and Jack O'Shea died 7 April, aged 97. As well as being featured in Lockout, both men's stories are being published in volume 2 of the Miners Oral History Project, Back at the Coalface.]

Jim Comerford (1913–2006)
at the April 2006 launch of his book, Lockout: The Northern New South Wales Coal Lockout 2nd March 1929 — 3rd June 1930, CFMEU Mining and Energy, Sydney, 2006, reviewed in this issue. The book was launched in Sydney by Kim Beazley, then Federal Opposition Leader.
Photo courtesy Paddy Gorman

Armed with all this rich material and support from a wide variety of sources, the team gradually got down to the basics of the story and as the months passed the final structure of the program took shape. During those many months of deliberations the team resolved that it would not be possible to give all the detail or explain many of the complex relationships between government, business, unions and communities in 50 minutes. Television can only do so much and viewers can only absorb so much.

In the end the team decided that the simple elements of the story would convey what was most at the heart of the situation in 1929: the rights of the miners, the struggle and hardship endured by families and communities, the stubbornness of the mine owners, the manipulation by federal and state governments, the failure of the negotiation process, the introduction of police control, and finally the impact on all those involved.

The LOCKOUT team's aim is to provide the trigger for discussion and debate over the political, industrial and economic climate in 1929–30 and the relationship to industrial life today. Hopefully this program will also give people another piece in the puzzle of Australian history, so much of which has been largely unknown.

The producers of LOCKOUT are proud to be able to bring this story to light and to preserve a very unique part of Australian history for future generations. They look forward to it being broadcast in 2007. The documentary will also be available for sale via the website <www.lockout.tv> later in the year.

Diane Michael is a journalist, producer and script editor with 30 years experience in television news, current affairs, education, drama and training programs.
<diane@lockout.tv>

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