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The Cairns Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League and the Community of the Left

Sue Taffe*


The Cairns Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League (CATSIAL) was a product of its place and time. Conditions in far north Queensland were conducive to the formation of such a body in the late 1950s. This article investigates these conditions, introduces key Cairns Aboriginal activists and explores the relationships between these activists and their non-Indigenous supporters. Drawing on the work of labour historians who have explored the concept of 'community' in labour studies it argues that a community of the Left existed within which the Cairns League could operate successfully. This community, while initially spatially based, broadened to become a community in which shared ideology overcame spatial separation so that the Cairns activists influenced national events despite their isolation from the centres of power.


In January 1960 a league for the advancement of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders was formed in the far north Queensland town of Cairns. This in itself was unremarkable; so called 'Aborigines advancement leagues', with predominantly Anglo-Australian memberships, had formed in all mainland states. In Cairns, however, Aboriginal and Islander members were in the majority and held all the main executive positions. They were actively supported by the non-Indigenous members who were also trade unionists and members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA).1 This article examines the relationship between Aboriginal and Islander activists in far north Queensland and their left-wing supporters, focusing on the formation and development of the Cairns League. It surveys the conditions which led to this alliance and argues that it was sustained, over decades, by shared values and understandings about the nature of Australian society and the need to reform it to improve the conditions of life of its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members. 1
      Prior to the formation of the Cairns League, nine Aboriginal advancement bodies formed the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA) at a meeting in Adelaide in 1958. Activists working in state-based organisations realised the advantages of forming a national pressure group. Many Aboriginal people were controlled by state and territory legislation which limited their civil rights. The best opportunity to amend these repressive state laws, especially in Western Australia and Queensland, was to argue the case for Commonwealth responsibility.2 2
      The FCAA built Aboriginal support slowly over its first three years but at its 1961 annual conference in Brisbane an increased number of Aboriginal participants made 'substantial contributions to the life of the conference both formally, and through their spirited and friendly participation in the social activity between the main sessions'.3 Joe McGinness, the secretary of the Cairns Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League (CATSIAL), was elected president of the FCAA, a position he would continue to hold through the life of this organisation. The Aboriginal delegates at the Brisbane conference passed a resolution of appreciation for the support received by trade unions and asked that 'they will continue to support us and help our people to take their rightful place in the community'.4 The Queensland Trades and Labour Council and the Cairns branch of the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) were represented and were among the first unions to affiliate with FCAA when the structure widened in 1962 to include bodies, apart from Aboriginal advancement leagues, which were sympathetic to FCAA's aims.5 3
      An important article, 'Broken silences? labour history and Aboriginal workers' by Raelene Frances, Bruce Scates and Ann McGrath was published in 1994. It drew attention to the fact that labour history had neglected the theme of Aboriginal history, pointing out that, apart from Andrew Markus's path breaking essay 'Talk longa mouth' published in 1978, there had been little analysis of the relationship between Aboriginal workers and the union movement. In asking why Aboriginal workers were absent from labour history studies Frances, Scates and McGrath suggested two explanations. The first is the problem of sources, and particularly the need for Aboriginal workers' accounts, in a study of Aboriginal labour. The second is an apparent reluctance among labour historians to engage in what is generally called 'Aboriginal history'.6 4
      Some historians have since written about Aboriginal people and unionised work. Dawn May's Aboriginal Labour and the Cattle Industry: Queensland from White Settlement to the Present studied Aboriginal entry into this industry in the 1840s through to the role of unions in the equal pay issue in the 1960s. Bernie Brian's thesis on the North Australian Workers Union (NAWU) included a substantial chapter on that union's work with Aboriginal members. Aboriginal Workers, a special 1995 issue of Labour History, collected together a number of valuable articles, especially Ann Curthoys and Clive Moore's historiographic essay 'Working for the white people'. None of the articles in this collection, however, focused on Aboriginal workers as unionists. A recent history of the Seaman's Union of Australia (SUA) by Diane Kirkby includes a chapter '"The struggle for dignity": solidarity with Aboriginal Australians' which explores the support given by the SUA to Aboriginal campaigns from 1949 when the union placed a ban on wool coming from Port Hedland in support of the Pilbara strikers. Kirkby details SUA support for the Cairns League.7 5
      Some labour historians have theorised about class and community. A collection edited by Ray Markey which grew out of the 1999 'Labour and Community' conference explored the concept of community as applied to a range of attitudes, including racial perspectives. A chapter in this collection by Bob Boughton surveyed the role of the CPA and its support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's struggles 'for greater control over their lives and communities'. Boughton considered the importance of key individuals in the development of policy, such as Tom Wright, member of the CPA, secretary of the Sheetmetal Workers Union and author of New Deal for Aborigines, published in 1939. He examined the role of Don McLeod (who was briefly a member of the CPA) in the historic Pilbara strike of 1946–49, and the strikes over labour conditions in Darwin in 1950 and 1951 which were supported by the communist leadership of the NAWU. Boughton referred to the support of communist-led unions, such as the WWF, for Aboriginal rights campaigns being organised in the 1950s and 1960s in Sydney and Melbourne; however he does not refer to the work of these organisations in far north Queensland. A later article by Lucy Taksa '"Like a bicycle, forever teetering between individualism and collectivism": considering community in relation to labour history' took this investigation further by drawing attention to the fact that people have numerous sources of identity and that places are spatially fluid and internally fragmented.8 6
      This article contributes to this conversation by arguing that the social and industrial conditions in Cairns in the late 1950s were conducive to the development of an Aboriginal rights movement which was led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people themselves. Class and locality were both of central importance in the formation of the CATSIAL. The young League was sustained and supported, however, more broadly, by particular individuals who would not be described as unionists or working class but who were members of the CPA. This political party, unlike others in the 1950s, was interested in the position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Australia polity and was developing policy to ensure a fairer future for them. The Communist Party provided a framework for thinking about issues of racial discrimination which so concerned the members of the Cairns League. As well, key members of the Cairns Branch of the CPA assisted in the development of the young, penniless League in many ways. The League soon made contact with a wider national movement, the FCAA, which had its headquarters in Melbourne. Distance appears not to have imposed a tyranny in this case. Enduring relationships between Melbourne and Cairns activists suggest a community which transcended space, based rather in a shared pursuit of social justice for Aboriginal and Islander Australians. 7
   

Far North Queensland: Conditions for Political Organisation

 
The particular circumstances of far north Queensland were conducive to the formation of the Cairns League. The nature of work in the north at this time, the industrial muscle of the WWF which included Aboriginal and Islander members, and the fact that Cairns was a magnet both for Aboriginal people moving south from the Cape York missions and Torres Strait Islanders moving to the mainland in search of work – these were all contributing factors. 8
      Although it is hard to recognise today amongst the glitzy tourism of reef and tropical palms, mid-century Cairns, with a population of 22,000, was essentially a working class place. It was the destination point for over 270,000 tons of processed sugar annually. There were ten sugar mills in the Cairns district employing over 2,000 workers and another thousand men were employed on the Cairns wharves during these years prior to the introduction of bulk handling.9 9
      Queensland cane-cutters and wharfies seemed more open to new ideas, and more attracted to communist ideology than labourers in other parts of rural Australia. In the early decades of the twentieth century Russian migrants working on cane farms in the Cairns district formed a Russian Workers Association and forged links with local militants. In Townsville two thirds of the Russian families joined the CPA when a branch was formed. There was also a high concentration of Italian, Yugoslav and Spanish working-class people in the sugar areas of the north, many of whom had fled fascism. The anti-fascist movement in north Queensland also contributed to increasing militancy within the sugar industry.10 Fred Paterson, lawyer, and later the only member of the CPA to be elected to an Australian parliament, moved to Townsville in 1933 after successfully representing Italian migrants in a case before the Townsville Supreme Court, challenging an arrangement between management and unions to limit non-British labour in the sugar industry. Paterson would later work pro bono for the Cairns League in their case against the Superintendent of the Hopevale Mission.11 10
      Fred Thompson, who was an active member of the Townsville branch of the CPA, believes that politically aware men from the southern capitals who were attracted to the regular seasonal work in shipping, meat export and sugar brought the political issues of the day to the workplace and that they had a significant impact on the trade union movement in far north Queensland.12 These various social groups coalesced, forming the first northern branches of the Communist Party less than two years after the CPA had been formed in 1920.13 Far north Queensland has been described as 'the only place in Australia where communism had come close to being a people's movement': it was a people's movement which included both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members.14 11
      By the 1950s, working conditions on the wharves, had been transformed under the strong and respected WWF leadership of Jim Healy, an influential member of the CPA. On Healy's watch, the exploitative 'bull system', where men were chosen for their strength and sometimes their compliance, was replaced by the 'ganger system' in which men organised themselves into teams or gangs. A tradition of union militancy meant that wharfies valued the power of organised labour and the strike weapon to gain and maintain working conditions.15 When man power, as opposed to conveyor belts, was used to get the bagged sugar onto ships, the WWF was in a powerful position.16 12
      Men who preferred irregular work were attracted to the wharf. Boxers and other professional sportsmen, as well as aspiring writers found this aspect of wharf work amenable.17 Similarly, Aboriginal and Islander men with family responsibilities outside Cairns found that work which depended on a ship being in port suited them.18 Wharf work was also marked by a high level of comradeship and pride. Raymond Miller, a sociologist who has studied dockworker culture in a number of societies, argued that wharfies believed that others in the society considered them a low status group.19 This may help to explain the apparent acceptance of Aboriginal and Islander workers as equals in the industry at a time when this was not evident in other industries. On the Cairns wharves, Aboriginal workers such as Joe McGinness received the same pay and working conditions as their white comrades. By contrast, Aboriginal drovers employed in the cattle industry who were controlled by the Queensland Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act 1939–1946 (hereafter referred to as The Act) were entitled to only half the pay of a white drover, and the money was paid into a trust account which could only be accessed with the permission of the local district officer, usually a policeman.20 Aboriginal wharfies in Cairns were treated the same as their workmates. 13
      Wharfies shared a deep distrust of management. Miller cites a Liverpool study which concluded that a 'belief persists in dockland that employers are ruthless, that they care only for profit and are capable of resorting to all kinds of trickery and subterfuge'.21 A 'them and us' mentality would have been understood by Aboriginal wharfies and their wives who had experience of social and economic exclusion. 14
      A further characteristic of the wharf culture which may help explain the WWF's support for Aboriginal rights campaigns in the 1960s is its internationalism. Miller has argued that this internationalism is a consequence of wharfies' contact with foreign goods, seamen and ideas, and has led to a sense of comradeship with wharfies throughout the world.22 Aboriginal historian John Maynard has shown that Aboriginal dockworkers in Sydney were in contact with foreign black seamen, and the establishment in 1903 of the Coloured Progressive Association provided opportunities for its predominantly Aboriginal members to share ideas with African-American and West Indians.23 15
      By mid-century the WWF was forthright in its opposition to racism. Its May Day banner in a Cairns march, always a well attended event, proclaimed proudly 'WWF Condemns Race Hatred Everywhere'.24 Les Rennells, an Aboriginal wharfie who transferred from Bowen to Cairns when the introduction of bulk handling at that port led to job losses, told the Maritime Worker 'I have never experienced racial discrimination in the Waterside Workers Federation'.25Maritime Worker editor Douglas Lockwood, a member of the CPA, brought an international context to matters of race, encouraging readers to see that Aboriginal people's political struggles in Australia were not unrelated to the movement against apartheid in South Africa and the civil rights movement in the USA.26 16
      The Cairns branch of the WWF was particularly independent in its decision-making. The men who followed the sun to the north Queensland ports were renowned for their 'individual and collective disinclination to conform to the terms of the federal award' according to Sheridan. The practice of 'spelling' or resting, for example, was not a part of the award but in subtropical humidity, with gang members handling 250-pound bags, it became customary in the northern sugar ports. The Cairns branch in particular is singled out by Sheridan as being prepared to overrule the WWF head office advice with regard to stoppages. This spirit of independence was successfully appealed to by branch member McGinness who sought financial and practical help for his campaigns.27 17
      Torres Strait Islanders brought with them to Cairns industrial experience which stretched back over decades. Service in the Torres Strait Defence Force during World War II had been the norm for adult Torres Strait Islander men. In both peacetime (the 1936 strike on the pearling boats) and war (the four-month 'strike' by Torres Strait Light Infantry A Company) Islanders displayed their capacity for political organisation.28 Gerald Peel relates that when he was working in the Sydney office of the CPA, a Torres Strait Islander had come in to discuss the problems of his people. 'No one but the Communists', Peel reported him as saying, 'are likely to do anything about the wrongs of my people'.29 This experience of exploitation, and support from communists in fighting injustices, prepared Torres Strait Islanders for the pressure groups politics of the League. 18
      In the post-war period Aboriginal and Islander people looking for work were attracted to Cairns. They came from other centres on the mainland as well as from the islands of the Torres Strait. By the early 1960s development of plastic buttons was eroding the trochus and pearling industries in the Torres Strait, and consequently people from Thursday, Moa and other islands joined families such as the Pitts, Sailors and Walters who had already settled in Cairns. Jacob Abednego, Dulcie Flower, Etti Pau, Koiki Mabo, Fred Walters, Elia Ware, Wees Nawia and others would all represent Islander interests in the Cairns, and later Townsville, Leagues and at national annual conferences. It was their agitation which led to the renaming of FCAA when in 1964 it became the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, or FCAATSI.30 19
      Prior to the formation of the Cairns League, left-wing unionists were the only group to challenge the status quo and the hegemony of the missions. Fred Thompson and Kevin Loughlin, both members of the CPA and Queensland organisers in the Building Workers Industrial Union (BWIU), saw Aboriginal carpenters and other tradesmen on mission stations as being a part of their responsibility as union organisers. Thomson helped a carpenter, Ian Motton, who lived at Weipa Presbyterian Mission, to buy a sewing machine for his wife and a radio for himself with his earnings. Although Motton had the money to cover these items the mission authorities disapproved of such purchases. Thompson found a suitable radio and a treadle sewing machine and through his union networks arranged for the Seamen's Union to ship the items.31 His reward was a grateful letter from Motton who wrote about how his world view had been extended by the radio.

We always switch on to Townsville, Longreach and sometimes Cairns ... We heard on Saturday night that some sort of Carnival was on in one of the streets down there. I forgot which street that was mentioned. I wondered if you and Kev were there enjoying yourselves. It's nice to know that you all are still fighting for us.32
Motton's circumscribed, limited view of the world had widened; he could now hear the sounds of the streets of Cairns and Townsville and, importantly, he knew of two unionists who he could call upon.		 20
   

Key Cairns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Activists

 
A movement for social change depends not just on ameliorative conditions. People who can lead, such as Joe McGinness and Gladys O'Shane, the indomitable hardworking duo at the heart of the young League, were also needed. Others such as Ruth Wallace from Mapoon mission and Islander Elia Ware were also active members of the Cairns League from its inception. They attended annual FCAA conferences where they brought the concerns of north Queenslanders to national attention. 21
      In 1951 Joe McGinness transferred from Thursday Island to Cairns wharf where he would work for the next 16 years. He described joining the Thursday Island branch of the WWF as a 'salutary lesson' when he realised that Islanders who were under The Act and not members of the WWF received much lower wages. 'The workers associated with a union could take their problems to a union, others outside the union could complain in vain. They cried in the wildernesss33 22
      Joe McGinness was born and raised in Darwin; on the death of his Irish father when he was four, he, his Kungarakan mother and another brother were taken under the Northern Territory's Aboriginals' Ordinance to the Kahlin Compound where Joe received an inadequate schooling for a few years. By the time he was 12 years of age he was working as a rouseabout. Through his brother, Val, he met Xavier Herbert who sowed the idea that people of mixed descent might form a body to campaign for their rights as citizens. The result of these discussions was the formation of the Northern Territory Half Castes Association, led by another brother, Jack McGinness. Joe wrote: 'I have no doubt that my early association with Xavier was a motivating factor in my becoming involved in the struggle for Aboriginal rights later in my life'.34 His life experiences as a young man included marriage and the birth of two children and then the tragic death of his young wife as a result of heart disease only four years after their marriage. Experience of the depression and work in northern Australia was followed by war service. By the time he transferred to Cairns, McGinness had learned how to deal with routine discrimination and exploitation. He realised that 'these protection laws did not really protect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders' working conditions but in fact had the opposite effect'.35 His strong relationship with his mother, Alyandabu, connected him to his Aboriginal culture, while work in the north and war service in Borneo developed his understanding of the working of Australian society. Joe soon found a place in the WWF, first as a job delegate, and later as branch treasurer, as well as among the Cairns Aboriginal and Islander community which was growing during the post-war years.36 He would become known and appreciated through the northern Aboriginal settlements as 'Uncle Joe', willing to help sometimes barely literate people with forms and applications and attempts to escape from the powers of the Act. McGinness' long term friend and activist colleague, Dr Barry Christophers, described him as being 'at home with prince and pauper alike; with rich and poor; with black and white'37. 23
      When McGinness arrived in Cairns he found that Aboriginal people were social outsiders. The outdoor Tropical Theatre had segregated seating and most hotels refused to serve Aboriginals and Islanders. The Coloured Social Club provided the one place where people could feel accepted. It was not only the social centre for non-whites, but assisted new arrivals and provided small loans to help with business ventures, and as such, it was a less political forerunner of the League.38 24
      McGinness met Gladys O'Shane (who would become the inaugural president of the Cairns League) through her husband, Paddy, who worked on the wharf. Gladys was the daughter of Edgar and Caroline Davis who were born and raised at Yarrabah Mission near Cairns. Edgar's Aboriginal heritage was Kuku Yalanji but his people lost their land when the Daintree forest was opened for selection in the late 1870s. Being of mixed descent and having adopted Christianity probably helped their application for exemptions from the Queensland Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (an earlier form of the Act already mentioned). When Gladys was born they were living in Mossman, north of Cairns where her father was an elder of the Pentecostal Church. Like Joe, Gladys' experience of education was limited to a few years of primary school. Though bright, she was a victim of the discriminatory attitudes of the times which saw education for Aboriginal people solely as a preparation for menial labour. By her early teens she was working in a Mossman laundry.39 25
      The O'Shane family – Paddy, known as Tiger, Gladys and five children, had arrived in Cairns in the late 1940s. (His response to taunts from racially prejudiced men explains the nickname.) With an Aboriginal wife, Paddy faced discrimination when trying to rent a home for his family. When Gladys appeared, accommodation was suddenly no longer available. Finally, he bought land at Holloways Beach, north of Cairns, where he built a shack for his family.40 26
      Gladys O'Shane's early political experiences were as a wharfie's wife. Her daughter Pat recalls the effect that the 1954 national waterside strike in response to proposed changes to the Stevedoring Act had on her mother. The Federal Government attempted to weaken the WWF's hard won control over hiring practices. As a member of the WWF Cairns Women's Committee, Gladys supported the striking men by gathering and distributing food to their hungry families. Wharfies' families, like many Aboriginal families she knew, were poor and depended on the support and camaraderie of the group when times were tough.41 27
      In 1958, despite a natural reticence, O'Shane took her first step onto the national stage when she represented the Cairns branch at the second national conference of the Women's Committees of the WWF in Sydney. She addressed hundreds of wharfies' wives, telling them 'we are fighting for the rights to become self supporting self respecting citizens with full citizenship rights'. The Queensland Act was 'as vicious as any Crimes Act', she explained. It made the Director of Native Affairs the legal guardian of every Aboriginal child in the state. Under this Act people could be forced to leave their homes, and private property could be seized. She argued that 'the Aboriginals' fight for recognition cannot be divorced from the white people's own struggle'.42 She explained:

The whole basis of this is economics. The Government must have a slave labour pool, an unemployed pool. Without it squattocracy could not survive. Stirring up prejudices between the coloured people and the whites they cause divisions among the workers thereby trying to break down hard won conditions and preventing them from going on to better things.43
She encouraged 'all right thinking Australians' to 'join with us in our struggle for a better way of life', finishing her rousing speech by thanking her audience for listening to her plea 'on behalf of my people'.44 For O'Shane the WWF was a natural place to begin her political advocacy: here support already existed for the disadvantaged. The influence of Marxist analysis is evident in her speech. In 1960 Gladys joined the CPA, the organisation which seemed most interested in assisting in her growing commitment to political activism on behalf of Aboriginal Australians.45		 28
      Among the Cairns Aboriginal community were some who had escaped from the northern missions. Ruth Wallace and her sister Muriel Callope came from Mapoon Mission high on the west coast of the Cape.46 Ruth realised that her best chance of leaving Mapoon Mission lay in marriage. Her husband, Pedro Wallace, was exempted from the Act and so they were able to move to Cairns. Finding their own place to live proved impossible due to discrimination with regard to housing but they were able to stay with Pedro's mother while they were establishing themselves in Cairns.47 29
      Under the Act all residents of reserves and missions in Queensland had their lives controlled by the Director of Native Affairs and his appointed 'protectors of aboriginals'. The regulations prescribed by the Act were even more autocratic and undemocratic than the Act itself. Aboriginal courts could consist of the superintendent sitting alone – and he needed no legal training. People could be 'summarily ejected from the reserve' if they did not conduct themselves 'to the satisfaction of the protector or supervisor'. Dancing required the mission superintendent's permission, and representation in court, a fundamental right in British law, required the permission of the court.48 The remoteness of the north Queensland denominational missions – Mitchell River, Edward River, Aurukun, Weipa, Mapoon on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, Lockhart River, Hopevale and Yarrabah on the east coast – and Bamaga and Palm Island government settlements, coupled with these powers meant that residents' lives were tightly controlled and it was difficult to get any information from these missions to the outside world. Breaking down this isolation would become one of the League's early goals. 30
      Another foundation member of the Cairns League was Elia Ware from the Torres Strait. He was attracted to the mainland when diving work on the islands was drying up when the pearl button industry was declining. He brought his large family from Moa Island, landing at Holloways Beach, north of Cairns where, as they moored the boat, they met their new neighbours, the O'Shane family.49 31
      These founding members, with the support of their friends in the labour movement, began the huge task of challenging the living conditions in Cairns, on the northern missions and in the inland towns such as Mareeba where Aboriginal people lived as impoverished fringe groups, unemployed, watched and often hassled and abused by the police. Ruth Hennings (Wallace) recalls 'we used to go to Trades and Labour Council meetings to tell them what was happening to people'.50 McGinness has described this Council as 'the only white organisation in Cairns that showed concern over reported cases of injustice'.51 In 1956 it had undertaken a fact-finding mission to investigate life at Yarrabah Mission Station, home to 800 Aboriginal people. Newspaper reports of the token wages, authoritarian discipline and inadequate food at Yarrabah helped to break down the isolation experienced by these mission residents.52 32
      In Cairns at this time, according to McGinness, 'hardly a day went by without some person being victimised in one way or another, simply because they happened to be non-white'.53 There seemed to be a growing sense of grievance among Aboriginal and Islander people and a developing preparedness to do something about their situation. 33
   

The Union Community and the Formation of the Cairns League

 
As Ray Markey noted, Labour historians exploring the concept of community have considered the term as relating to locality or geographical space and the social relationships formed in that context. In Cairns Aboriginal and Islander men and women were active in the WWF, the Union of Australian Women and the Cairns, Trades and Labour Council. Within this unionised environment the drive to organise was realised. FCAA executive member, Victorian activist and member of the CPA, Shirley Andrews, understood this in her explanation to Lady Jessie Street:

It is only in centres like Cairns that you get the situation where groups of Aborigines and groups of militant trade unionists are in sufficiently close touch for them to be able to work closely together.54
 34
      Just before Christmas Day 1959 a blatant case of racial discrimination in the workplace against a young man named Freddie Reys was reported at a meeting of the Trades and Labour Council. Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders present agreed that 'an Advancement League be formed in order to protect the interests of our people at all levels, in order to reach a higher standard of living with wage-justice'.55 Reys, the son of Aboriginal and Filipino parents, whose wife had just given birth to their first child, had taken a job as a driver with the Blue and White Taxi Company. As Reys tells it, the white employees, who had gone to school with him, decided he was too confident and cocky for 'a blackfella' and set out to break his spirit. The taxi company radio operator, who was a part of this scheme, sent Reys off on fake calls. When he returned with no fare he was told 'Oh, she must have changed her mind and caught a bus'. Then, even more seriously, this group arranged for a female passenger to lay a false charge of sexual harassment. Just before Christmas, demoralised, and unable to earn a living, Reys was ready to quit. He told his story to his Aboriginal mate Pedro Guivarra who worked on the wharf. 'Stay there' said Guivarra. 'Don't resign'. But Reys was sacked anyway. The matter was raised at the Trades and Labour Council meeting which decided to boycott the taxi company. When the dismissal became public, the acting Mayor apologised on the local radio station, describing Reys as 'a member of a respected Cairns family'. Finally, as a result of the boycott, Reys was re-instated.56 The Maritime Worker ran the story. 'Cairns workers rout racialists' which announced victoriously:

The people of Cairns have swept aside, with the mighty hand of UNITY, an attempt by some members of the Blue and White Taxi Company to stir up racial discrimination by sacking a driver because of the color of his skin. A solid boycott, initiated by trade unions, inspired support far beyond the labor movement, and demonstrated that Australia need have no 'Little Rock' stains on her honor if the workers are prepared to act.57
Here was a union taking action against discrimination with a positive outcome, unlike the situation in Little Rock, Arkansas (which had been widely reported in Australian newspapers) where the local governor closed the schools to prevent the enrolment of African-American students in a state high school. The Maritime Worker's editorial explained that the paper 'very rarely makes its page one lead a contribution from a member' but that it had done so in this case because 'Nazi racialism has flared again in many parts of the world'. It continued:

Racial persecution, whether it be directed against Jews, Australian Aborigines, American Negroes and Indians, Asians, Africans or foreign-born migrants is a menace to trade unionism, to liberty, living standards and peace.58
Author of the article, Joe Howe, member of the Cairns WWF branch, explained that:

our newly formed Cairns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Advancement Committee [sic] did a very fine job of assisting with the black ban ... It was born through unity of our unions with our Aborigines and Islanders fighting for higher living and democratic conditions in our district.59
Joe McGinness and fellow wharfie Joe Guivarra, Gladys O'Shane, a member of the WWF Women's Committee, and pensioner Harold Jackson described as a 'courageous fighter for his people' were reported as comprising the inaugural executive.60		 35
   

Community: Shared Ideology; Sharing Responsibility

 
While the executive of the Cairns League primarily comprised Aboriginal and Islander people, support came from a small number of hardworking non-Indigenous members. Joyce Tattersell, who Joe McGinness described as one who 'came out of the storm', a 'trusty who had experience in journalism', helped with editing.61 Joyce had been a reporter on the staff of Tribune, the CPA newspaper, and had come to Cairns after working at the CPA headquarters in Sydney. After befriending Gladys O'Shane, she volunteered her services.62 She ran the impoverished office where, as she explained, there was 'not a phone or a decent car (ours is on its last legs) or even a typewriter, except my old crock, in the whole place'.63 The WWF provided a meeting place and copying facilities for producing newsletters, McGinness co-opted others to assist, such as ethno-botanist, Dr Len Webb. Also a member of the CPA, Webb got to know McGinness during his research into photoplasma in Mareeba when McGinness had shared his botanical knowledge with him. Shocked at his observations of the way Aboriginal people in Mareeba and Cairns were treated, Webb joined the Cairns League. Ruth Hennings (formerly Wallace), summed up the contributions of the non-Indigenous members of the Cairns League. They were, she explained, 'helpers' who 'drove, baby-sat, and edited', but they 'never told us how to write'.64 36
      From its inception the League set out to broaden its support base and make links with existing Aboriginal rights networks. Its first regional conference, held in July 1960, was officially convened by president, Gladys O'Shane, and secretary, Mary Maloney, with organisational support provided by the Cairns Trades and Labour Council. Over a hundred people including politicians, Aboriginal leaders, unionists and members of southern activist bodies attended, linking the new League to an existing developing network of activists working for Aboriginal rights in other parts of the country. The League distributed a Declaration of Human Rights which described the harsh, undemocratic restrictions under which people controlled by the Act lived and asked that 'racial discrimination in all its forms, direct or indirect, by word or deed, become recognized as morally wrong and impermissible, punishable by law where necessary'.65 37
      As well as connecting with existing activists it was vital for the success of the League that it make contact with people in isolated locations, an example being Ian Motton from Weipa. Aboriginal and Islander people had to be persuaded that the Cairns League was not only well-intentioned but that it could deliver an improvement to people's lives. Through these early years Gladys O'Shane and Joe McGinness travelled in an old borrowed car over the unmade roads of the far north during the dry season, meeting people, listening to their troubles and encouraging them to organise politically. Following these trips, letters, often composed by groups, flooded into the League office asking for help with social service applications among other things.66 38
      In May 1961 the League took on its first case opposing discrimination. Joe Guivarra was contacted by a young Aboriginal man, Jim Jacko, from Hopevale Mission who was under police custody, waiting for the boat which would exile him to Palm Island. Guivarra recounted what he had heard to Joe McGinness. The young man had been seen by a missionary at the local Hopevale Mission football game sitting with his girlfriend. Unmarried couples socialising was against the rules in this segregated Lutheran mission, so the couple's punishment was two weeks' work, including Saturdays, with no pay. In protest they ran away from the Mission together returning a few days later to face their punishments. The young woman was caned and had her hair roughly cut off in front of the other girls and young women as a warning to them. When he failed to persuade Jacko's brothers to take up the cane, Pastor Kernich flogged Jacko who was then to be forcibly transported to Palm Island government settlement as further punishment. When Jacko was in Cairns, however, he gave his police minders the slip and told his tale to Joe Guivarra.67 39
      This case prompted the first organised campaign by the Cairns League and saw it working closely and effectively with left-wing unions. Gladys O'Shane reported on events at Hopevale at the 19th Congress of the CPA and foreshadowed plans by several members of the Party to force a public enquiry.68 Cairns League members and wharfies provided sanctuary for Jacko. This decision was not lightly taken as under the Act 'harbouring an Aboriginal' was a criminal action.69 Letters to the Queensland Director of Native Affairs and the Minister built pressure until an open enquiry into the flogging was announced. Fred Paterson, formerly CPA state member for Bowen, agreed to represent Jacko and a delegation which included Kevin Loughlin from the BWIU, Gladys O'Shane, Joe McGinness, Torres Strait Islander Fred Walters, representatives from Cairns and Townsville Trades and Labour Councils, Pauline Pickford from the Council for Aboriginal Rights in Melbourne and Labor parliamentarian, Tom Uren, travelled to Hopevale for the hearing. Evidence was presented over five days and the Pastor was found to have infringed regulation 29 of the Act.70 But it was the Act itself, not just the infringing of it, as well as the harsh mission rules, to which representatives took objection. Kevin Loughlin who had previously helped Weipa Mission residents, pointed out that under the Act 'an Aboriginal may not leave [the Mission] if he wants to and may not stay if he wants to'. Furthermore, Loughlin told the magistrate that in 1961 it was 'inconceivable' that a young couple could be punished in the broader society for sitting together.71 This community of the Left gained publicity for the flogging, the Pastor's initial denial of wrong doing, and the eventual judgment.72 The support which came from these organisations was multi-faceted: the WWF paid for the fares of the Cairns Aboriginal and Islander delegates to Hopevale; Paterson worked pro bono; the Trades and Labour Councils publicised the incident and Pickford wrote an account of the case which was published as a leaflet and circulated nationally.73 40
      The next year the League responded to calls for help from Mapoon residents. Comalco had leased 787,200 acres of what was Mapoon Mission from the Queensland Government but both the Presbyterian Missions Board and the Government denied a link between the decision to close the mission and the mining lease. Meanwhile the people were subjected to threats that the school, church, store and ration boat would be cut and if the people still would not move then they were told 'the mining people will come with their bulldozers and run over your children and your wives'.74 Joyce Tattersell described the experience of reading letters from Mapoon residents as a 'real heartbreaker'.75 'We all here are standing very strong', one wrote. 'We all said we won't shift from here ... Uncle, you must try and help us fight strong'. Another pleaded 'please hear this call. We want to hold this place Mapoon, the place wherein we were born into the first Gospel of Christ'. Allan Parry, a community leader and elder of the Church, asked: 'Is there any law that can force us away from Mapoon?' He was sacked from his job, dismissed from his church position and exiled to Thursday Island for his outspoken opposition.76 In response to a request from McGinness, Len Webb produced a pamphlet telling of:

a handful of unwanted people clinging desperately to their homes and hunting grounds, whose stubborn stand epitomises the whole struggle of a despised people who have been deprived already of their lands and beliefs, but who refuse to surrender their belief in human rights.77
Through their combined efforts McGinness, O'Shane, Tattersell and Webb ensured that this shameful event was brought to the attention of the rest of Australia. This campaign was not successful, despite their best efforts but at a time when the issue of an Aboriginal right to land was beginning to be discussed nationally the forced eviction from Mapoon added weight to the growing view that Aboriginal people had a moral claim to mission lands.78		 41
   

Widening Community: The Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement

 
Geographically remote from southern centres of activism, the Cairns League recognised the value of affiliating with the FCAA. This affiliation was mutually beneficial. In February 1960 President O'Shane and Mary Maloney attended the third FCAA conference, held in Sydney where they impressed FCAA secretarial consultant, Shirley Andrews, who described them as being 'just full of ideas and with that really burning sense of injustice that is such a wonderful force to inspire action'.79 On her return home Gladys made the first of many contacts with FCAA General Secretary, Stan Davey, detailing cases of police brutality in Mossman where her parents and siblings lived.80 42
      The League executive ensured that as many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members as possible had the opportunity to attend FCAA conferences so they could see that they were not alone in their battles against discrimination. In 1961 Joe McGinness and Ruth Wallace attended the Brisbane conference. For Ruth it was her first visit to a city. She shocked her white audience with her account of the deprivations of life for those growing up at Mapoon Mission in the 1930s.81 In 1963 Ruth's sister, Muriel Callope, and Elia Ware attended the first FCAA conference to be held in Canberra. Joyce Tattersell described Muriel as a changed woman as a result of her trip to Canberra, writing 'it is hard to believe that just that one, enormous for her, experience, could make such a difference'. Elia Ware reported on his return that the conference opened his eyes. The League minutes recorded that he 'believed everyone should join the League and that Aborigines and Islanders must stand together'.82 43
      For Joe, the 1961 conference was the beginning of a collaboration and friendship with Dr Barry Christophers, president of the Council for Aboriginal Rights in Melbourne, which lasted a lifetime. Their first campaign was against a racist exclusion in the federal Tuberculosis Act. Aboriginal Queenslanders who contracted TB were denied the generous Commonwealth allowance established to control the spread of this infectious disease. A campaign was waged by the two men – Joe collecting data from the north Queensland hospitals he visited and Barry using it to develop a case for amendment to the Tuberculosis Act with the assistance of the Commonwealth Director of Tuberculosis. They succeeded 16 months later when the Government amended the Tuberculosis Act without fanfare, hoping to avoid international scrutiny and diplomatic embarrassment.83 This was the first of a number of collaborations between the two men. 44
      For the FCAA executive, located in Melbourne and at this stage in its development almost exclusively Anglo-Australian, the Cairns League provided valuable information about what was happening in the remote far north. The League brought the case of Aboriginal residents at Mareeba Reserve, who had been victims of police violence, to national attention. A police assault on a 15-year-old girl in April 1962 seemed to galvanise the people into action. Such abusive behaviour had happened previously but it seems that encouragement by McGinness and O'Shane to start a Mareeba Advancement League, and possibly awareness of the success of the Hopevale case the year before, had given the people the courage to stand up to the police. The Cairns League supported and assisted the people through the formal process of bringing charges against two police officers.84 The FCAA and its affiliated bodies, the Victorian Council for Aboriginal Rights and the Queensland State Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, supported the Cairns League by sending out information bulletins as well as writing to the Queensland authorities. Following the guilty verdict against one of the constables, Paddy O'Shane reported to Pauline Pickford in Melbourne:

We've had a really great victory. Egan has been convicted. The penalty was really lousy but the effect on the 'people' was terrific ... The small Mareeba court room was full each day and I'm sure this had a profound effect on the magistrate.
O'Shane mused: 'I think this is the first time the State has taken action against one of its servants on behalf of an Aboriginal person. Could it be a sign of the times?'85		 45
      The case, like the Hopevale one before it, was probably without precedent. Most importantly it was reported by the Federal Council and its affiliated organisations.86 Cases of abuse such as those at Hopevale and Mareeba while common in the north, were much less known about in the south. The finding of a white pastor and a white policeman guilty under Australia law, and the reporting of these judgments in the southern daily presses, bridged the gap between northern isolation and despair, and southern ignorance but desire to help.87 46
   

Enduring Friendships

 
Most of those active in the Cairns League were members of the CPA, as were a number of their closest associates in Melbourne: Shirley Andrews, Pauline Pickford and Barry Christophers. As mentioned earlier, when the League formed the CPA was the only political party which had developed policy in Aboriginal affairs.88 However, the people I have written about, certainly not ideologues, were often critical of CPA policy. At the 20th Congress of the CPA in 1964, Gladys O'Shane publicly criticised Ted Hill, a Victorian Party leader, who had claimed that 'ninety percent of the Aborigines were ready for revolution'. Instead she described her people as 'backward, segregated and passive' and added pointedly that 'there was a great need for trade union help'.89 Barry Christophers publicly debated draft CPA policy in 1964 which categorised Aboriginal Australians as a 'national minority'. Christophers argued that they were not a nation, having neither a common language nor economic cohesion.90 The publication of his views seemed to irritate party officials such as Ted Bacon, especially when Christophers disputed the claim that the CPA was the only group in Australia in the 1930s interested in the Aboriginal question. Christophers argued convincingly that others such as Mary Bennett and Fred Wood Jones, both non-communists, had made important contributions to an understanding of the Aboriginal predicament as outsiders in their own land.91 Furthermore, it seems clear that in the cases of Gladys O'Shane, Barry Christophers and others who were seriously engaged at the grass roots level in challenging discriminatory laws and prejudicial attitudes it was less CPA ideology than a concern for social justice which united them and which fuelled their activities in trying to extend justice to Aboriginal and Islander Australians. 47
      It is important, as Lucy Taksa reminds us, to recognise the multiple identities of activists in the Aboriginal cause. This is especially so when considering those of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander background. This article has considered Joe McGinness as unionist and Gladys O'Shane as CPA member. Within the community of the Left these two people could operate effectively as political activists but their Aboriginal heritage provided a deeper identity. Alf Neal, a League member from Yarrabah Reserve, reminds us that Joe was 'a man that come from a tribe. He fought in the War. He was a great leader that worked with modern law and tribal law'.92 Joe has titled his autobiography Son of Alyandabu, recognising above all others his connection to his Kungarakan mother and the familial obligations which flowed from that relationship. Pauline Pickford recounts the distress experienced by Gladys O'Shane when she was rebuffed by the Hopevale people in 1961. Gladys considered them 'her people', but the Lutheran missionaries, in stereotyping the contingent which included Gladys as 'godless communists', effectively stripped her Aboriginal identity from her, making communication extremely difficult. Tragically Gladys died in 1966 as a result of misadventure following an operation. Her death was a great loss to her family and to Aboriginal and Torres Strait people whom she would no doubt have represented on a national level if she had lived. To Ruth Hennings she was 'a brilliant leader, who had so much love for people'.93 Would she have remained a member of the CPA? Maybe, like her sister activist, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, who argued that she did not want to be responsible for people joining a political party simply because they were following her lead, she would have left the Party, but in the early 1960s it provided her with very useful support.94 48
      The relationships between Anglo and Indigenous Australians flourished, despite the distance between Gladys O'Shane, Joe McGinness, Ruth Wallace, Elia Ware and others in Cairns, and Pauline Pickford, Barry Christophers, Stan Davey and Shirley Andrews in Melbourne. Gladys O'Shane and Pauline Pickford, who met at Hopevale, campaigned together for the Lake Tyers people in Gippsland who were fighting to retain their reserve. Just two years before his death in 2003 Joe McGinness enlisted the support of both Len Webb and Barry Christophers following the Queensland Government's refusal to fund a highly successful horse-breaking program set up to assist troubled Aboriginal youth. These three men had worked together on various issues for four decades.95 49
      Within the Cairns League, and then FCAA, the activists I have discussed in this article shared a bond of conscience as they worked to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people be recognised as full Australian citizens but also as the original owners of the lands which became Australia. They questioned the right of governments and mining companies to dig up the homes of people who had earlier been moved onto northern missions, such as Mapoon, by governments wishing to control them. Their work together opposing racial discrimination in the statute books as well as in the pubs, shops and picture theatres of the nation depended on the support of a community which shared ideas about society. Left-wing unionists and members of the CPA made significant contributions to the work for Aboriginal rights in the 1950s and 1960s, contributions freely acknowledged by both Gladys O'Shane and Joe McGinness who led the movement in far north Queensland in the early formative years and brought the Queensland experience to the attention of the nation. 50


Sue Taffe is the author of Black and White Together FCAATSI: the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973 (2005). She has also produced a website 'Collaborating for Indigenous Rights' at www.nma.gov.au where some of the documents drawn on in this article may be accessed. She is currently working on a study of relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists from 1930–80.
<sue.taffe@arts.monash.edu.au>


Endnotes

*  My thanks to Bain Attwood, Charles Fahey, Andrew Markus, Ian Spalding and the two anonymous Labour History referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Thanks also to former members of the Cairns League and FCAATSI and to their families for contributing interviews to this research.

1.  While the records of the first four years of the Cairns League have been destroyed I have established through League correspondence and minutes from 1964 on held in the McGinness papers, MS3718, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies), Canberra, that all executive positions, with the exception of the treasurer, were held by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Arthur Hubbard, a non-Indigenous member held the treasurer's position for most of the 1960s.

2.  The issue of campaigning for a referendum to amend section 51 (26) and repeal section127 of the Australian Constitution so as to empower the Commonwealth in Aboriginal affairs was discussed at this meeting. In three months in 1958 FCAA gathered 25,988 signatures on a petition which was presented to the Commonwealth Parliament requesting these changes. Smoke Signals, December 1958, pp. 3–4; see also B. Attwood and A. Markus, The 1967 Referendum: Race, Power and the Australian Constitution, 2nd edition, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2007; Sue Taffe, Black and White Together, FCAATSI: the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, UQP, St Lucia, 2005.

3.  Four Aboriginal men were present at the 1958 meeting in Adelaide when FCAA was formed. In 1961 30 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were present. See 'App.endix 1: Attendance at annual FCAATSI conferences, 1958–1972 in Taffe, Black and White Together, p. 314; 'National Conference for Aboriginal Advancement 1961' (unsigned but by a non-Indigenous observer, Ian Spalding) Aboriginal Advancement Council of Western Australia, MN1176, acc3491A/45, Battye Library, Perth.

4.  'The 4th National Conference on Aboriginal Advancement: resolutions arising from the conference, University of Queensland, Easter 1961', UQFL234, Communist Party of Australia, box 7, Fryer Library, University of Queensland.

5.  Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement, Affiliated Organisations, 1962, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/10/9, State Library of Victoria (SLV).

6.  Raelene Frances, Bruce Scates and Ann McGrath, 'Broken silences? Labour history and Aboriginal workers' in Terry Irving (ed.), Challenges to Labour History, Sydney, University of New South Wales Press, 1994.

7.  Dawn May, Aboriginal Labour and the Cattle Industry: Queensland from White Settlement to the Present, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1994; Bernie Brian, The Territory's One Big Union: The Rise and Fall of the North Australian Workers Union, PhD thesis, Northern Territory University, 2001; Ann Curthoys and Clive Moore in Ann McGrath and Kay Saunders with Jackie Huggins (eds), Aboriginal Workers, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Sydney, 1995, special issue of Labour History, no. 69, Nov. 1995; Diane Kirkby, Voices from the Ships: Australia's Seafarers and their Union, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2008.

8.  Ray Markey (ed.), Labour and Community: Historical Essays, University of Wollongong Press, Wollongong, 2001; Bob Boughton, 'The Communist Party of Australia's Involvement in the Struggle for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People's Rights, 1920–1970', in Markey (ed.), Labour and Community, pp. 263–294; Lucy Taksa, 'Like a bicycle, forever teetering between individualism and collectivism: considering community in relation to labour history', Labour History, no. 78, May 2000, pp. 7–32.

9.  Lawton Taylor (ed.) The Australian Sugar Year Book, Strand Press, Brisbane, 1960, p. 189; S.E. Solomon, Statistics of the State of Queensland for the Year 1959–1960, Government Printer, Brisbane, 1960, 33Bii; Joe McGinness, Son of Alyandabu: My Fight for Aboriginal Rights, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 1991, p. 35.

10.  Diane Menghetti, The Red North: The Popular Front in North Queensland, History Department, James Cook University of North Queensland, Townsville, 1981, ch. 1, 5.

11.  Paterson was Member of the Legislative Assembly for Bowen from 15 April 1944 to 29 April 1950. Ross Fitzgerald, The People's Champion, Fred Paterson: Australia's Only Communist Party Member of Parliament, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1997, pp. 61–70, 230–233.

12.  Cited in May, Aboriginal Labour and the Cattle Industry, pp. 161–162.

13.  Fitzgerald, Fred Paterson, p. 43, Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998, ch. 6.

14.  John McLaren, Free Radicals: Of the Left in Post War Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2003, p. 102.

15.  Margo Beasley, Wharfies: A History of the Waterside Workers' Federation of Australia, Halstead Press, Sydney, 1996, pp. 197–198; Tom Sheridan, Australia's Own Cold War: the Waterfront Under Menzies, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2006.

16.  Lawton Taylor (ed.), The Australian Sugar Year Book, Strand Press, Brisbane, 1960, p. 189; S.E. Solomon, Statistics of the State of Queensland for the Year 1959–1960, Government Printer, Brisbane, 1960, 33Bii; McGinness, Son of Alyandabu, p. 35.

17.  Tom Sheridan, 'Australian wharfies 1943–1967: casual attitudes, militant leadership and workplace change', in Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 36, no. 2, June 1994, p. 262.

18.  I have not been able to establish the exact number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men employed on the Cairns wharves in the 1950s, but there were at least six: Joe McGinness, Pedro Giuvarra, Joe Giuvarra, Mick Miller (senior), Les Rennells, Monty Maloney. Ted Hollingsworth and Terry O'Shane were Aboriginal members of the Seamen's Union. Chicka Dixon has said that during his employment on the Sydney wharves there were over 20 Aboriginal men employed. It would be reasonable to expect that there were more than six at Cairns. C. Dixon interview, Sydney, 20 June 2006.

19.  Raymond Charles Miller, 'The dockworker subculture and some problems in cross-cultural and cross-time generalisations', in Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 11, no. 3, June 1969, p. 305.

20.  Robert Castle and Jim Hagan, 'Regulation of Aboriginal labour in Queensland: protectors, agreements and trust accounts 1897–1965', in Labour History, no. 72, May 1997, pp. 73–74; Comparison of the wages of workers under the Station Hands Award and of Aborigines under the Aboriginal Preservation and Protection Acts (Queensland), 1962, Council of Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/12/1, SLV

21.  Miller, 'The dockworker subculture, p. 310.

22. Ibid.; Sheridan traces this international outlook back to events such as the London dock strike of 1890 which was supported by Brisbane wharfies, Sheridan, 'Australian Wharfies 1943–1967', p. 269.

23.  John Maynard, Fight for Liberty and Freedom: The Origins of Australian Aboriginal Activism, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2007, p. 19.

24.  Waterside Workers Federation float, May Day march, late 1950s, B4004, Cairns Historical Society, Cairns Museum.

25. Maritime Worker, 2 May 1960, p. 13.

26.  See Maritime Worker, for example, editorial 26 January 1960.

27.  Sheridan, 'Australian Wharfies 1943–1967', p. 265; Sheridan cites two illustrative examples: 'After thorough investigation a member with a poor record was deregistered by the federal agency for being drunk on the job, and when challenged, physically threatening the foreman. The considered opinion of the union's federal office was that the Federation should not act on his behalf. Nevertheless, the branch closed the port for twenty-four hours in protest ... On another occasion assistant general secretary Ted Roach informed the branch secretary that it would be "the height of foolishness" to go ahead with a planned 24-hour stoppage. The branch committee accepted the advice but was overruled at a special branch meeting by the rank and file who duly closed the port for a day'. Sheridan, 'Australian Wharfies 1943–1967', p. 274; See minutes, Waterside Workers Federation, Cairns Branch, N140/19–21, Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University, Canberra (NBAC).

28.  See Robert Hall, The Black Diggers: Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in the Second World War, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1989, ch. 3 and Jeremy Beckett, Torres Strait Islanders: Custom and Colonialism, University of Cambridge Press, Cambridge, 1987, ch. 2 for details of these strikes.

29.  Gerald Peel, Isles of the Torres Strait: An Australian Responsibility, Current Book Distributors, Sydney, 1947, p. 7.

30.  McGinness, Son of Alyandabu, pp. 36–37; Regina Gantner, The Pearl Shellers of Torres Strait, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1994, p. 221; Anna Shnukal, 'Torres Strait Islanders'. In Maximilian Brandle (ed.), Multicultural Queensland 2001:100 years, 100 Communities, A Century of Contributions, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Queensland, 2001; Interview with Grace Fischer, née Ware, Cairns 6 October 2007.

31.  Fred Thompson to Ian Motton, 1 October 1957, Fred Thompson papers, box 2, file xi, James Cook University Archives, Townsville.

32.  Motton to Thompson, 6 April 1958, Fred Thompson papers, box 2, file xi, James Cook University Archives, Townsville.

33.  McGinness, Son of Alyandabu, p.34.

34. Ibid., p. 24.

35. Ibid., p. 27.

36.  'Cairns Aborigine on Union Executive', Maritime Worker, 3 August 1960; Ross Fitzgerald, A History of Queensland from 1915 to the 1980s, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1984, pp. 116–117.

37.  Interview with Barry Christophers, 27 September 1996, FCAATSI Oral History Project, 1996, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra.

38.  McGinness, Son of Alyandabu, pp. 35–38.

39.  Robert Reid, Sunday Mail, Brisbane, 2 June 1996, reprinted in The Habit, Holloways Beach Residents Association Inc, January 2002.

40.  Interviews with Margaret O'Shane, Cairns, 9 October 2007; Pat O'Shane, Sydney, 3 December 2007; Terry O'Shane, Cairns, 17 October 2004, 12 October 2007; Daniel O'Shane, Cairns, 10 October 2007.

41.  Interview with Pat O'Shane, Sydney, 3 December 2007.

42.  Second Conference of WWF Women's Committees, 25 September 1958, Z248/109, Waterside Workers Federation, Women's Committee files, NBAC.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid.

45.  'Gladys Dorothy O'Shane', A6119/90, 2760, National Archives of Australia, Canberra (NAA).

46.  The Presbyterian Church had missions at Mapoon, Weipa, Aurukun and Jessica Point (now Napranum), all on bauxite-rich land on the west coast of Cape York. On the east coast the Lutherans ran Hopevale Mission and the Australian Board of Missions was responsible for Yarrabah, near Cairns. Mona Mona, on the tablelands near Kuranda was run by the Seventh Day Adventists. Mitchell River, (now Kowanyama), Lockhart River and Edward River were all run by the Anglican Church. Doomagee, near the Northern Territory border was run by the Christian Brethren. Government reserves were established at Palm Island and Bamaga.

47.  Interview with Ruth Hennings (Wallace), Cairns, 31 August 2006.

48.  The Aboriginal Regulations of 1945, Queensland Government Gazette, vol CLXIV, 23 April 1945, Brisbane, Government Printer, see clauses 21, 33, 35.

49.  Interview with Grace Fischer, Cairns, 6 October, 2007.

50.  Interview with Ruth Hennings (Wallace), Cairns, 31 August 2006.

51.  McGinness, Son of Alyandabu, p. 38.

52.  Supplementary to Minutes: Trades and Labour Council of Queensland, 'Report of a Delegation of the Cairns and District Trades and Labour Council on the Yarraba [sic] Mission, 1956, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/2, SLV; '"Proud People now Hopeless": Authorities Censured for Mission "Neglect"', The Truth, Brisbane, 12 February 1956; Cairns Post, 18 October 1957. See also Lynne Hume, 'Them days: life on an Aboriginal Reserve 1892–1960', Aboriginal History, vol. 15, 1991, pp. 19–22.

53.  McGinness, Son of Alyandabu, p. 38.

54.  Shirley Andrews to Jessie Street, 5 October 1961, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/11/5, SLV. See Ray Markey, Introduction, Labour and Community, p. 1.

55.  McGinness, Son of Alyandabu, p. 39.

56.  Phone conversation with Fred Reys, 12 March 2006; see also McGinness, Son of Alyandabu, p. 38–39.

57.  Joe Howe, 'Cairns workers rout racialists', Maritime Worker, 26 January 1960, p. 1.

58.  Editorial, Maritime Worker, 26 January 1960, p. 1.

59.  Howe, 'Cairns workers rout racialists'.

60. Ibid.

61.  Joe McGinness to Pauline Pickford, 26 November 1961, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/3/1, SLV.

62.  'Joyce Tattersell' A6119, vol 1, 4025335 and vol 2 4025334, NAA.

63.  Joyce Tattersell to Shirley Andrews, [n.d. but most likely during 1964] Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/9/8, SLV.

64.  Ruth Hennings (Wallace), interview Cairns, 11 July 2008.

65.  'The Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Declaration of Rights', Decisions of the first conference of the Cairns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League, Cairns, 29–31 July 1960, in the author's possession.

66.  Personal communication, Doris Webb, Brisbane, 18 May 2006.

67.  This incident was written about at the time by Pauline Pickford, 'The Hopevale Mission Flogging', Unitarian Church, [1961]; also reprinted as a leaflet, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/6/2, SLV.

68.  'Gladys Dorothy O'Shane', A6119/90, 2760, NAA.

69.  Interviews with Shirley Ainsworth, Cairns, 16 October 2004 and Margaret O'Shane, Cairns, 9 October 2007; Pauline Pickford, 'The Hopevale Mission flogging', The Beacon, Unitarian Church, 1961.

70.  'Corporal punishment shall not be inflicted upon any aboriginal over the age of 16 years of a reserve, settlement, or mission reserve and shall not be inflicted without the authority of the Director.' Regulations, Aboriginal Preservation and Protection Act, 1939, Queensland Government Gazette, 23 April 1945.

71.  Submission by Kevin Loughlin at Hopevale Mission Enquiry 20–26 June 1961, file 1, box 1, Fred Thompson papers, James Cook University, Townsville; Pauline Pickford, The Magisterial Inquiry regarding illegal maltreatment practised on Mr Jim Jacko and Miss Gertie Simon, conducted at Hopevale Lutheran Mission, July 1961, unpublished manuscript, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/6/2, SLV. This incident is described in more detail in Taffe, Black and White Together, pp. 72–76.

72.  For example: The Age, 15, 16 May, 1961; The Sun, 13 May 1961, Tribune, 28 June 1961.

73.  The Cairns branch of the WWF contributed £71.00 to cover the transport costs of Cairns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates. Minutes of Cairns branch of the WWF, 28 July 1961, N140/19, NBAC; Pickford, 'The Hopevale Mission Flogging'.

74.  Len Webb, Draft of They Have made Our Rights Wrong: The Struggle for Mapoon, Joe McGinness papers. MS3718/17/1, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra.

75.  Tattersell to Andrews, 8 May 1963, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/9/8, SLV.

76. They Have Made Our Rights Wrong: The Struggle for Mapoon [less graphic published version of the earlier draft], Cairns Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League, 1962, McGinness papers MS3718, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra.

77.  Webb, Draft of They Have Made Our Rights Wrong.

78.  From 1963 on the issue of an Aboriginal right to land was discussed, with a growing sense of urgency, at conferences. See Taffe, Black and White Together, ch. 6, 'Recognising rights to land'.

79.  Shirley Andrews to Jessie Street, 14 July 1060, Jessie Street papers, MS2683/10/717, National Library of Australia (NLA).

80.  Third annual conference of Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement, Sydney 1960, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/10/4, SLV; O'Shane to Davey, 11 May 1960, Bryant papers, MS8256/182, NLA.

81.  FCAATSI Oral History Project. Interview with Barry Christophers, 27 September 1996; interview with Ian Spalding, 3 February 1998.

82.  Joyce Tattersell to Shirley Andrews, 8 May 1963, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/9/8, SLV; Minutes of general meeting, Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders Advancement League, Cairns, 9 May 1963, McGinness papers, MS3718/3/3, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra.

83.  See S. Taffe, 'Health, the law and racism: the campaign to amend the discriminatory clauses in the Tuberculosis Act', Labour History, no. 76, May 1999, pp. 41–58.

84.  McGinness to Pickford, 26 November 1961, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/3/1, SLV; Interview with Ruth Hennings, Cairns, 31 August 2006.

85.  Paddy O'Shane to Pauline Pickford, 24 June 1962, and a further letter soon after, nd, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/3/3, SLV.

86.  For example: Newsletter, monthly bulletin of the Queensland State Council for the Advancement of Aborigines, no. 8, 1962.

87.  'Native flogging charge: inquiry on', The Sun, Melbourne, 12 May 1961; 'Aboriginal court gave "caning" orders' The Age,15 May 1961; 'Racism on trial in "Mareeba Incident"', Tribune, 4 July 1962; 'Police Bashings', Special Bulletin, Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement, 8 May 1962, Council for Aboriginal Rights, MS12913/8/4, SLV.

88.  The 15th Congress of the Australian Communist Party, Sydney, 7–10 May 1948, passed a resolution drawing attention to the 'deplorable plight of the native aboriginal race'. It stated that to arrest the extinction of the native race ... all further alienation of tribal lands cease immediately'. Furthermore it presented the case for the assumption of responsibility by the Federal Government and the abolition of all 'laws and ordinances discriminating against them and the immediate granting of equality of rights with all other citizens'. State Record Office of Western Australia, 993, 592/48.

89.  'Gladys Dorothy O'Shane', A6119/90, 2760, NAA.

90.  Barry Christophers, 'Are the Aborigines a "nation"?', Tribune, 18 March 1964, See also Tribune, 25 March and 1 April 1964.

91.  E.A. Bacon, 'Draft programme for Aborigines', Communist Review, October 1964.

92.  Phone conversation with Alf Neal, 11 October 2007.

93.  Interview with Ruth Hennings, 31 August 2006.

94.  'Stan Davey' Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Agent's Report No 63/1283, A 6119, 2590, NAA.

95.  Joe McGinness to Peter Beattie, 21 February 2001, and other related documents, Len Webb papers, MS4157, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Studies, Canberra. See also Christophers papers, MS7992, NLA.

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