Can anyone help me with my history essay? (vietnam war)?

Question

it's a 1pg essay on "why was the vietnam war of such significance to the australians?'

Answer 1

TRADE UNIONS AND THE VIETNAM WAR


Trade union opposition to Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war did not emerge fully-formed in 1965. Yet a significant part of trade union opposition to the Vietnam war derived from a tradition of involvement in anti-war campaigns and other non-industrial issues. Traditions of activism depend on conscious human transmission; they are invented and re-invented among each generation of activists. As Eric Hobsbawm argues, such "invented traditions ... use history as a legitimator of action and cement of group cohesion." (Hobsbawm & Ranger: 12)

For instance, the Draft Resisters Union reprinted an anti-conscription poster produced by the Industrial Workers of the World in 1915.

Initially the IWW stand had been unpopular. In 1914 the vast majority of the organized working class in Australia supported Australia’s involvement in the First World War, as the Labor Prime Minister Andrew Fisher declared Australia would assist Great Britain "to the last man and the last shilling". But by 1916 the horrors and privations of the war had dulled patriotic fervour and, more important, enlistment figures. Fisher’s successor William Hughes’ attempt to introduce conscription met strong opposition. The labour movement was at the forefront of the anti-conscription campaign and the government was defeated in two referenda.

The Australian Trade Union Congress explained the labour movement stance:

Fellow unionists -- Conscription is the law in Great Britain and in the Republic of the French. In both countries conscription has been used to render null and void all the achievements of Trade Unionism ... conscription has been used not merely as an instrument of national defence, but as a bludgeon to break down the standard of the industrial classes. (Main: 37)

Other workers and socialists saw the war as the work of capitalists who were profiting from the fighting without making the sacrifices that workers were called upon to make. The government’s inability to control prices and profit in the way it controlled wages was a major factor. Demands to conscript wealth were popular.

These events were followed by a general strike in August 1917, in response to the introduction of the card or "Taylor" system, which involved in all 97,507 workers throughout Australia

In November 1938 waterside workers at Port Kembla refused to load pig iron on the "Dalfram", which was bound for Japan. The refusal was in reaction to Japan’s war in China and the use of iron in its war effort. Bans on loading war materials on ships bound for Japan occurred from the middle of 1937, and by October the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) and various Trades and Labor Councils around Australia were endorsing such embargoes. In February 1938 Port Adelaide waterside workers passed a resolution that they were "Compelled in the interest of humanity to refuse to load further shipments of scrap-iron for Japan, believing that by doing so they are protesting against a ruthless slaying of innocents by Japanese naval and military authorities." (Quoted in Lockwood 1987: 110)

The significance of the Port Kembla WWF’s ban on the "Dalfram" was the length and intensity of the dispute and its legacy. The "Dalfram" stayed in Port Kembla from November 14 1938 until January 22 1939, when waterside workers agreed to load it in return for assurances from the government that it would ban further loads of pig iron going to Japan. That waterside workers took such action over a non-industrial issue is all the more remarkable considering it took place during the Depression, when the Transport Workers Act (TWA), which restricted who could work on the waterfront, was in force.

For his part in attempting to break the boycott, Prime Minister Robert Menzies incurred the life-long enmity of many unionists and the nickname of "Pig-Iron Bob".

In March 1942, as Holland’s colonial possessions in South East Asia fell to Japan, much of Indonesia’s administration, army and navy fled to Australia. In April of that year 2,000 Indonesian seamen in Australia went on strike over wages and conditions and were imprisoned. Their union supported the strikers in part, securing their release and a massive improvement of ship conditions and pay. When on August 17 1945 the Indonesian Republic was proclaimed, Indonesian soldiers, sailors and airmen in Australia refused to fight for the Dutch against the newly declared republic. They secured the support of the maritime unions, who refused to load any ships taking military supplies to the Netherlands East Indies forces or any ship declared "black" by the Indonesians. In all, 559 ships were held up in ports around the country. Lockwood argues that the boycotts and bans of Dutch shipping, which he labelled "the Black Armada", "represents the greatest boycott demonstration of its kind in Australian history. It is difficult to recall a boycott anywhere in the world comparable in character and scope. (Lockwood 1982: 5)

In 1948, the Malayan Communist Party was waging a guerilla war against the British authorities, who requested Australian weapons and equipment. The Seamen’s Union of Australia (SUA) threatened to boycott shipments of such material and refused to allow merchant shipping to be used to carry weapons. In June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea and the Korean war began. Australia committed its forces under the leadership of the United Nations. The Executive of the SUA made the decision to ban the transportation and handling of war supplies to Korea. The Attorney-General threatened to charge the SUA Executive with treason under the Crimes Act.

These campaigns formed traditions that trade unionists were to draw upon in their opposition to Australia’s involvement in Vietnam.



Early Actions: The Maritime Unions



Trade union opposition to Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war preceded the Menzies government’s declaration of its decision to send a battalion of ground troops to South Vietnam on April 29 1965. Unions such as the Building Workers’ Industrial Union (BWIU) and the SUA called upon the Australian government to withdraw military advisors stationed in South Vietnam. The federal government had initially sent thirty members of the Australian Army Training Team to South Vietnam in July 1962, yet by early 1965 the number of Australian military advisors in Vietnam had grown to a hundred. (2) The government’s announcement produced varying degrees of protest from the labor movement. The ACTU Executive declared on the 4th May 1965 that it was:

strongly opposed to the decision of the Federal Government to send a Battalion of Australian troops which can be used as a combat force in South Vietnam or anywhere else except in accordance with international obligations…and urges the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party to press in the Federal Parliament for the Federal Government to revoke the decision to send active troops to South Vietnam.

The declaration also called upon Trades and Labor Councils to coordinate public meetings with the ALP on May 23 to garner support for the ACTU’s policy and the ALP’s opposition to the use of Australian troops in Vietnam. (ACTU: 57)

The BWIU demanded the total withdrawal of all foreign troops from Vietnam. Yet it was once again the maritime unions which took the most militant action. Approximately two and a half thousand waterside workers walked off the wharves in Melbourne to protest against Menzies’ decision to send troops. Later in May, SUA Melbourne branch members employed on tugboats boycotted an American warship and a submarine, thereby affecting docking processes. (4) Five hundred seamen, waterside workers and ships’ painters also picketed the American embassy in Brisbane.

On May 5 1965, the Executive of the ACTU decided that it would not support industrial action taken against the war:

in the light of the discussion which took place on the Vietnam situation, the decision of the Executive means that the Executive is not supporting industrial stoppages as a protest against the Government’s decision to send troops to Vietnam or further industrial action to prevent further passage of troops or conveyance of materials for use by Australian troops in South Vietnam." (Fitzpatrick & Cahill: 206)

Such a declaration came largely in response to the WWF’s request that the ACTU call a twenty-four hour nationwide stoppage. Rupert Lockwood noted that the ACTU president, Albert Monk, had been hesitant to endorse so-called "political" strikes. Likewise, Monk and other members of the ACTU Executive had come into conflict with the maritime unions in 1946 over the boycott of Dutch ships, with an anonymous ACTU spokesperson suggesting the WWF could be expelled from the ACTU unless it allowed so-called Dutch "relief" ships to take supplies to Java. (Lockwood 1982: 196) The competing traditions in the labor movement, which had clashed before on the role of industrial action in political matters, were set to do battle again over Australian involvement in Vietnam. Monk’s declaration against "industrial stoppages as a protest" was to be sorely tested in 1966 and 1967. Once again, waterside workers and seamen took up the banner of peace, and it was their tradition of industrial action over political issues and their strategic position in the economy which were to make the events of 1966 and 1967 possible.

Answer 2

Go to www.historychannel.com, or www.wikipedia.com. That might help