How I saw Mining and the Depression

'After full consideration of all the issues involved and with very grave concern for the importance of the steps considered to be absolutely essential, all Associated Northern Colliery Proprietors have agreed that it will be possible to carry on coal production only if the Unions associated with the industry are prepared to voluntarily accept, on behalf of their members and our employees, a reduction of twelve and a half per-cent on all wage scales.

Unless such agreement is reached, all Associated Northern Colliery Proprietors will be compelled to terminate the employment of all workmen, of all classifications at present engaged.'

Thus began the infamous ‘Lockout.’  A speaker at the miner’s meeting said,

‘This is one time there is no need to worry.  The Law is on our side.  The Owners, the Government and even the Press, have always demanded that we should abide by arbitration instead of using direct action.  The owners aren’t using arbitration.  They are using direct action.  The Government and the Press and the Courts will have to make them open the pits.’

            The immoral, illegal Lockout lasted for fifteen months.  So much for the honesty of the Government,  the Press and the Courts.

            You can call a miner a bastard and he will laugh.  You can even kick him, he is used to being kicked by everyone else.  But call him a ‘scab’ and he will fight.  A scab is someone who will work outside the Law, outside the Union rules.   Who will take the job of men who are ‘on strike’ and thus help the boss to gain income and starve the strikers into  submission.  You do not call a man a scab unless you mean it.

            By the end of 1929 the State was desperately short of coal.  Railways and Industries were grinding to a halt.  The State Government promised at last to take charge and ‘do something’.  The miners cheered.  ‘The Government will make the Company open the pits.’   The Government announced that they would open Rothbury mine with ‘free labour’.  The dreaded ‘scabs’ would take over.  The miners were shocked, then infuriated.

            There had been a precedent for this action on 30th September 1890.  During a strike of that period a crafty person, T. S. Huntley, bought coal lying at Greta pit at 7/6 per ton.  He brought eighteen non-unionists from Newcastle with an escort of two constables, to load the coal during the Sunday night by moonlight.  They were met by up to eighty unionists who showered the scabs with blue metal stones from the railway track and struck Huntley in the arm.  Shots were fired by the ‘scabs’ who  eventually retreated in confusion.

            Huntley came back later with an army of armed men who took 1500 tons of coal without incident.  Bought at 7/6 per ton, it was sold at 28/- per ton, a profit of 2500 pound less costs.

            So a new generation of scabs arrived at Rothbury on 15th December 1929.

            What happened at Rothbury has been widely mis-understood and mis-represented.  I can vividly remember seeing miners, singly, and in pairs and in groups, silently walking  down our street.  No conversation, every face set in a grim mask.  On they came, disappearing from sight into the bush.  Men from Weston and Kurri camped overnight at Greta, then onto Rothbury in the morning.  Cessnock men went direct to Rothbury.

            Jim Comerford was present at Rothbury at the age of sixteen.  In an article written by him in 1956, he told what he saw.

            Miners had marched to the pit in an orderly fashion.  A few police tried to stop them.  The miners  leader Sheridan explained, ‘We only want to talk to the scabs to ask them to leave here, so there won’t be any trouble.’

            Miners went over the fence on to the mine property.  Police came out of the bush and attached them with batons.  The unarmed miners fought back.   Police came mounted on horses, swinging batons.  Still the miners came on.  The Police opened fire with revolvers.  There were no miners carrying arms, so they turned and ran.  The Police pursued them over the fence and up the hill, still firing.

            Then there was a silence.

            Comerford wrote:  ‘A long drawn out shout goes up, and the crowd gives full cry to its hatred of the police and their work.  There is frenzy, frustration and grief in that cry.  It is fed by the sight of the men lying on the ground.  -  All over the field and the road men are shouting out their collective and individual hatreds.  It is no mere passing emotion.  It is deep.  It is there for all time.  The same intensity and grief lies over this field that comes with disaster underground.’

            Returned soldiers among the miners screamed   ‘Guns, give us guns.’  Newspapers tried to claim that the miners were armed.  It was a lie.  The feelings of the miners were so outraged seeing their mates shot down, that if they had guns, the finish to the story of Rothbury would have been different.  It would have made Eureka look like a picnic.

            It may sound silly to compare Rothbury with Eureka.  At Eureka, a community of miners, goaded beyond endurance by a callous ruling class, took up arms to defend their way of life.  They were viciously put down by an out-of-touch Government, using all the force at their disposal.  The miners were victims of a situation we had hoped never to see again.  Take out ‘took up arms’ and I have just described Rothbury.

            The Government had no funds to give a subsidy to coal production.  They could provide unlimited funds for police protection of scabs.  The City Press reported, ‘The trouble on the Northern Coalfields of N.S.W. reached a climax on Monday morning when mob rioting of a very serious nature took place.  One miner was shot dead, two were critically injured, five  others were hurt.’  Twenty five others were not counted as ‘hurt,’ they suffered from a ‘baton attack’.

            The Prime Minister had appealed to the State Premier Bavin to defer opening the mine for a time.  The latter had refused.  So we are told the real culprit.  Too late for martyr Norman Brown, shot down.

            In the middle of 1930 the miners accepted the reduction of 12.5% and went back to work, if it could be called that.  The world wide Depression, imported from America, ruled coal owner and miner alike.

            I can remember a hunger march.  Several hundred miners held a meeting in the street outside Weston Police Station.  They flew the Red Flag on the station fence and sang the communist theme song ’We’ll keep the Red Flag flying here.’  I suppose they chose the Police Station as an affront to Authority.  The local Sergeant defused it a bit by coming out to join in.  Sergeant Gillies was an ornament to the Force, well respected by all.  The men then marched onto Abermain for more meetings.  Later there were marches all over the state to Parliament House.

            Every afternoon  children played about the street corners in the town.  There were no playgrounds.  As six o’clock approached there would be a gradual slowing down of activity.  At  six only a deathly hush.  At six the Pit whistle would tell the world if there would be work tomorrow or not.  Then we would hear ‘Only two days pay for this fortnight.’  Life would resume.  No matter how young, each pinched little face knew what it meant in their home.

            When miners could not pay the rent to their landlord he got an eviction order.  The police were then forced to move the unfortunate family out of the house.  The whitewash and bag humpies on Hebburn Estate grew into a township where nobody paid rent.  The empty house was then declared ‘black.’  As long as it stood nobody would ever live in it again – ever.

            The electricity for Weston came from Hebburn Colliery.  Therefore all power produced by the colliery during the Lockout was black.  If any house was seen with electricity on, it soon had a rock through the window as a gentle reminder.  Some people who knew no better would wrap brown paper around the light globe to disguise its use.  But   not  for long.  Kerosine lamps and candles became a way of life again.  We did not miss TV, washing machine or refrigerator, we had none.

            Policing the black ban was not vandalism as we know it today.  It was an act of a desperate people trying to protect their way of life.  Fighting  for their ideals of Unionism and Comradeship.  Sometimes ideals were all they had to live on.

            So the Depression wore on.  Sir Otto Niemeyer came from the Bank of England in 1930 to help us out.  His answer - Australians would have to lower their too high standard of living, reduce their wages and pay higher taxation, so they could make full payments of interest to English bondholders and the Bank of England on loans taken to build our railways.  Good news to the Bag Humpy Set on Hebburn Estate.  The Bavin Government agreed and said ‘sacrifices must be made all round.’  Jack Lang opposed him and became Premier in 1930.  Lang thundered ‘Go to hell.  I won’t do it, I’d sooner make you wait for your interest.  You share the sufferings you so coldly inflict on the people.’   State Governor Sir Phillip Game sacked him.  John Kerr was forty three years behind in that infamy.

            In 1939 England declared war on Germany.  Suddenly, magically, there was plenty of money for the war.  Now England pleaded not for interest, but for the bodies of Australian Soldiers.  Our Governments pleaded for coal.  The wheel had turned full circle.  Who could blame the miners?