Unholy Fury (29 page)

In Australia, however, these developments only seemed to provoke the opposite effect. Not only did the maritime unions issue another ultimatum to the White House to end the war within a week, they also targeted workers at American-owned companies, such as General Motors Holden (GM-H). In early January Eliot told the press that ‘as thousands of people are getting bombed in Vietnam, thousands of workers at GM-H plants should be prepared to take action'.
¹⁴
The federal secretary of the Builders Workers Construction Union, Norm Gallagher, announced that his union would ‘seriously think of banning work on new union building projects carried out by American firms'.
¹⁵
The striking unions also called for the establishment of a
national trade union fund to help rebuild a Hanoi hospital destroyed by the bombings; for the federal government to send an Australian National Line ship carrying medical supplies to Hanoi; and for all unions to express their public support for the stance adopted by Minister Clyde Cameron, who reportedly praised economic pressure as a means of influencing US policy on Vietnam. Further, they raised the spectre of a black ban on all American companies and considered an appeal to the public to boycott all American goods and services. As the secretary of the Waterside Workers Sydney branch put it, what they had mind was a ‘similar campaign to the one organised by unions in 1937'. When the Japanese had started bombing northern China, the official explained, the union initiated a public ban on all Japanese goods. ‘It was so successful that in the end shops were trying to erase the name “Japan” on goods so they could clear them'.
¹⁶
Notwithstanding the almost universal and scathing criticism heaped on the Nixon administration for its bombing policy, to equate the American government with Japanese militarism of the 1930s was bound to cause offence, and verged on the shock rhetorical tactics employed by the Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme.

Virtually none of these outspoken union threats came to pass, but when the American liner
Monterey
arrived in Sydney on 3 January, the ship's sixty passengers had to be privately ferried ashore: the first time workers had an opportunity to refuse to unload a US ship.
¹⁷
Newspaper reports subsequently mentioned that the American consulate in Sydney fielded numerous requests from American citizens during this period, many nervous about any possible negative reception in Australia. Some even asked whether ‘it was still safe to go to Australia'; if the government was allowing United States citizens into the country and ‘whether they would be allowed to land if they went by ship'.
¹⁸
It would be difficult to think of another time in which American citizens were seemingly so unwelcome.

All this put the White House, to quote an official British source at the time, in a ‘pretty sour mood'.
¹⁹
As the words tumbled forth from the ministerial mouths, and as union leaders uttered even more bellicose threats, Australian diplomats in Washington went on the defensive. With the ambassador, James Plimsoll, still in Canberra for
consultations, it fell to his deputy, Roy Fernandez, to again take the heat from senior officials in the State Department. Having been blasted by Kissinger over the telephone, he was now engaged in an almost daily ritual of an official dressing down from the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, Marshall Green. On the day that Cairns spoke and the unions embarked on their strike, Fernandez was summoned to the State Department in Foggy Bottom and informed that Green was ‘under instruction from the highest level' to speak to him about the action taken by the Australian unions. Two American shipping companies had sent messages to Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers ‘expressing concern and shock over telegrams they had received from Australian unions'. The administration was ‘disturbed' as the bans ‘seemed to be aided and abetted by statements of Australian ministers'. As Green put it, Cairns and Cameron ‘had come close to inciting the public to demonstrate'.
²⁰
Clearly, it was one thing to brook dissent on the streets from the anti-war movement, quite another to have senior Australian politicians willing the protesters on. The message that Fernandez was urged to relay to Canberra was that the bans ‘could affect United States–Australia relations on a broad range of subjects'. By early January, American disbelief at the maritime bans was reaching something akin to panic, and Green confessed to Fernandez that he was ‘under considerable pressure from the White House' where ‘feeling was high because (a) the ban in Australia was the only one of its kind taking place anywhere in the world now that the ban in Genoa is settled and (b) Australia had previously been the United States' closest ally in Vietnam'.
²¹

The US government was doubly nervous about a possible escalation of industrial reaction since it knew then that the American International Longshoresmen Association—led by the renowned anti-communist Thomas Gleason—was about to retaliate and enforce a ban on the handling of all maritime cargo from Australian vessels. Announcing the move, which targeted ships arriving in New York, Boston, Tampa, Charleston and Savannah, Gleason had said that ‘if they don't want our goods, what the hell … we don't want their goods here'. It was the first time his 116 000 strong union, which
operated at 133 ports along the American east coast and around the Mexican Gulf, had ever struck against the ships of an ally: ‘We have never done this to a friend', he told journalists. ‘It was always against the commies, but Australia is our cousin. Any country can do whatever the hell they want to do, but they can't tell us what to do'.
²²
The association's vice president, John Bowers, declared simply that the Australian ban ‘throws men out of work, takes the bread out of our mouths'.
²³
Gleason, too, had a long history of using dock boycotts to enforce his own view of foreign policy, and his ban on unloading cargo from communist countries had only recently been lifted, when American waterside workers were permitted to load wheat bound for the Soviet Union under the Nixon administration's trade deal with the USSR. In 1972 Gleason had also ordered a one-day boycott of British goods in protest against London's policy in the Northern Ireland ‘troubles'.
²⁴
He too was not averse to raising threat levels, telling one newspaper that he might try to extend the American ban to all cargo arriving on Qantas planes. An Australian ship, the
Lake Eyre
, was the first to feel the retaliatory heat—carrying nearly 18 000 tonnes of Australian meat, it had to lie at anchor outside the port in Tampa, Florida, while the dispute raged on. The scene was simply too much for one Australian newspaper to bear:

 

There must be some way of achieving peace with honour between the maritime unions of Australia and the International Longshoremen's Association of America. Perhaps the association President, Mr T Gleason, and Australia's champion, Mr E V Eliot of the Seamen's Union, could meet at ten paces, armed with some of that Australian meat which will soon be rotting in ships tied up in America. It had all looked so simple to the Australian unionists: a black ban here, an ultimatum there, and quicker than a secretary could say “everybody out”, a settlement would be reached on Vietnam. But the agony of that war is not so easily ended—ask Dr Kissinger—and all the Australian unions have to show for their efforts, arrogance and ineptitude is an American counter-ban. While they might happily fight to the last Australian grazier, the hollow laugh is on them.
²⁵

 

In general the reaction from the Australian press was even more dismissive. Even after the Nixon administration called a halt in the bombings and a return to the negotiating table, the unions decided to continue the ban until the United States had provided ‘clear evidence' that it was about to sign a cease-fire agreement. The press saw it not only as a dangerous indulgence doing harm to Australia's international reputation and the alliance, but a serious lack of judgement on the part of a still new prime minister, who throughout much of the crisis maintained a steadfast silence.

The
Sydney Morning Herald
was appalled by the sight of trade unions jumping ‘ostentatiously on the latest Anti-American bandwagon', but argued that their ‘belated display of moral rectitude' had been aided and abetted not only by Whitlam's public admission of the strongly worded letter he had sent to Nixon, but also by the choice epithets of Cairns and Cameron. Under the title ‘Silly Season', the
Herald
suggested that, at the very least, both ministers required a ‘good deal of practice in the gentle art of keeping their mouths shut'. Cameron in particular seemed to have ‘contracted a bad case of foot in mouth disease and persists in behaving as if he was still in Opposition'.
²⁶
From the
Age
in Melbourne came damnation of the unions for their ‘private fantasies of global influence'. The
Courier-Mail
, which openly exhibited its American sympathies on a daily basis by carrying a quote from Thomas Jefferson under its editorial masthead, believed that the situation was becoming ‘Gilbertian—an international union feud'.
²⁷
In the words of the
Australian
the bans were little more than a ‘harmful ego trip', with the retaliation of the American unions likely to do ‘infinitely more harm to our interests than the pinprick of embarrassment' imposed on the Americans. The ultimate verdict was harsh: ‘they may have assuaged a few radical consciences and boosted the self-confidence of some union officials, but they have neither saved a single Vietnamese life nor budged US policy one iota'.
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The vehemence of this editorial reaction revealed, perhaps, a public culture not used to the adoption of so public a stand against the United States.

But it was Whitlam's silence on the issue that baffled and troubled onlookers the most. In Australia, and perhaps even more worryingly
in official Washington, which did not entirely grasp that Cabinet ministers speaking outside their portfolios were not necessarily speaking for the government, the silence from the prime minister was interpreted as support for both the insults and the union intervention. Almost universally editorial opinion across the country marked Whitlam down, seeing in his reluctance to speak out an abdication of leadership. Some Australian business leaders were also none too impressed. At the height of the crisis, Sir Frank Packer, the media mogul and managing director of Australian Consolidated Press, and a former New South Wales president of the Australian-American Association, sent his New York representative to meet with White House Director of Communications, Herb Klein. Klein noted that Packer had long supported conservative Australian governments during the Cold War and that his newspapers had advocated a vote for McMahon in 1972. Mr Packer, Nixon was subsequently told, had been ‘disturbed at the comments of the new Prime Minister of Australia and wanted you to know that those comments were not reflective of the majority of Australians' feelings toward the United States'. And Packer offered the president ‘any use you may like of his magazines and network'. That offer was politely declined, but Packer had made it clear that ‘he understands your motivation in the bombing of North Vietnam and supports you'.
²⁹
It was quite something for an Australian press baron to offer a foreign government the use of his media empire to undermine an Australian political leader.

Under growing pressure to speak out, Whitlam persisted in his studied silence. And, it seems, deliberately so. In private, the prime minister clearly shared the sentiments of some of his ministerial ‘mavericks', and he too was considering his own rhetorical escalation. Although he reassured his advisers that he would not be as ‘blatantly critical' in public of the Americans as Cairns and Cameron, he did raise the possibility of taking the US to the United Nations if the Nixon administration ‘started “monstering” North Vietnam again'. Sir Laurence McIntyre, then Australia's permanent representative to the UN, told him that the US would ‘bitterly resent any action by Australia which encouraged the (UN) Secretary General to act in the Vietnam context'. It would, McIntyre stressed, provoke an ‘unholy
row'. Or, in the colourful words of another veteran diplomat also present that day, Keith ‘Mick' Shann, such a move would provoke a ‘first class brawl' with the Americans.

Whitlam backed down, but not without growing even more bullish. The record of his meeting with McIntyre and Shann in early January shows an agitated prime minister letting off steam under pressure. In a revealing moment, he threw caution to the wind, admitting he was not ‘particularly worried about the United States reaction'. And then, perhaps showing the legacy of nearly a decade of gruelling debate and emotional involvement over the conflict, Whitlam thundered that the US ‘could not and should not win in Vietnam'. Further he was ‘convinced that there could not be peace in South East Asia until the United States got out' and that ‘Australia's interests were damaged by the United States continuing its presence in [the region] in a military sense'.
³⁰
Again Whitlam had shown his contempt for the conduct of US and Australian foreign policy during the Cold War.

Two days later, Whitlam telephoned the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Sir Keith Waller, amidst growing public pressure for him to call his ministers and the unions to heel and voice reassuring words to the American ambassador, Walter Rice. But Whitlam stubbornly refused to cave in. To Waller, Whitlam was equally blunt. He would not see the ambassador just yet. Nor would he make a statement lecturing or rebutting the unions, believing such a move would begin an endless cycle of commentary. ‘Any Labor government', he said, ‘could always be trapped by allowing itself to comment on industrial action'. But what Whitlam saw as a dignified, almost austere silence, others interpreted as cowering in the face of union pressure. The prime minister told Waller that he ‘personally believed the boycott was wrong and foolish but he would not publicly condone what the Americans were doing in Vietnam. The Australian government had made its attitude known to the United States. To say anything else would be confusing'. The present union proposals for action were dismissed as ‘silly', but he believed they would be resolved.
³¹
Indeed he was meeting with ACTU President Bob Hawke behind the scenes in an effort
to have the strikes called off. Although there is something to be said for Whitlam's desire to remain aloof from the fray—previous Australian governments had been unable to quell similar action by the same unions—Whitlam seemed to miss entirely the substance of the public and political concern: that the inflationary curve of diplomatic protest, verbal insults and union militancy only seemed to feed the perception that the new Labor government was not entirely in control of its foreign policy. Whitlam had been caught in a trap of his own making: believing that to condemn the unions was, in effect, to bestow some measure of legitimacy on the decision to resume the bombings of North Vietnam. It was a fundamental misjudgement that only made the task of rebuilding bridges with the Americans all the more fraught.