'The Union Buries Its Dead.'* And a second view of HMAS YARRA [III] nearing completion at WND, the dark dockyard - Graeme Andrews Collection.

3370. Looking at the RAN 75th Anniversary booklet 'Historic Williamstown Naval Dockyard,' there are two tables which indicate what naval work was going on in the dockyard when the Federated Ships Painters and Dockers fought a bloody union election around the Dockyard in Dec. 1971.

 

The Daring Class destroyers HMAS VAMPIRE [II] and HMAS VENDETTA [II] were both undergoing extensive half-life modernisations, projects that blew out to $10m [equalling their original construction cost ], and which ran so far over budget that plans to fit both with the Australian-designed Ikara anti-submarine missile system had to be scrapped.

 

The 800 ton new hydrographic survey ship HMAS FLINDERS was under construction, the shipyard's first naval nu-ship order for almost five years. As Christmas approached in 1971, one wonders what young sailors living on the barracks ship HMAS QUICKMATCH would have thought as they observed the goings on surrounding the union election in their midst.

 

The voting was held on December 17. Gunman James Frederick Bazeley [mentioned in the last entry, and 'minder' for union 'reform' candidate Billy 'The Texan' Longley], had stood with a gun in his hand and his foot on the ballot box, as the Dockers at H.M. Williamstown Naval Dockyard voted. Other weapons were also in sight. At the end of the process, Longley and his supporters were confident that they had won, fair and square, and were all set to claim their victory - but they still had to get the ballot boxes to the union headquarters in South Melbourne.

 

On their way out of the naval docks, 'the Texan's' car was blocked by three cars from which the occupants emerged, guns blazing, one of them apparently with a machine-gun. Anyway, Bazeley was wounded four times, and lost control of the ballot box. Thus, it was announced some time later from the union HQ that, lo and behold, the rival ticket of union secretary Pat Shannon had prevailed. All in all, in Docker terms, there had not been too many dead during the actual election campaign itself. One of Pat Shannon's supporters, the union's amiable but illiterate welfare officer, Alfred 'The Ferret' Nelson, had disappeared without trace from his Collingwood home, and his two-door Valiant coupe recovered from 10m of water off No. 21 South Wharf three weeks later. Meantime a docker named Desmond 'Cossie' Costello had been shotgunned to death in an apparent retaliation, and his body dumped in Clifton Hill, not far from 'The Ferret''s former residence. In general things settled down a little until Shannon, the election winner, was shot dead in the front bar of the Druid's Hotel South Melbourne 18 months later [in October 1973], and the late Jack 'Putty Nose' Nicholls took over. Tensions eased when Longley was arrested, and eventually convicted for his part in the Shannon assassination.

 

In the 1980s, the Costigan Royal Commission resulted in a number of criminal prosecutions, but In the end the Painters and Dockers were de-registered in 1993 not for their criminal activities, but for a lack of surviving members. A law introduced by the Hawke Government required registered unions to have at least 1000 members, and the Painters and Dockers could no longer raise that muster, probably as a result of its own rampant notoriety.

 

And such were the days around the dark dockyard out at Williamstown. finally privatized in 1987.

 

Photo: Graeme Keith Andrews Collection, it appears on the Naval Historical Society of Australia's two-disc set 'Warships of the Past and Present,' compiled by Mr Andrews, an Honourary Life Member of the Society. *Apologies to Henry lawson for the title 'The Union Buries Its Dead.' It is from a Lawson short story, first published in 1893.

Done