Hunger Town (21 page)

To make sure no further strike action was taken the Bruce Commonwealth Government rushed through the Transport Workers' Bill. Under its provisions my father and others were forced to register to obtain a special licence to work. To make matters worse, these licences could only be obtained from the Volunteer Employment Office set up by the ship owners. It was a ruse, a ploy, for although waterside worker unionists went cap-in-hand to apply for the licences, they were blacklisted. Fuming under the humiliation of what they nicknamed the
Dog Collar Act
the watersiders talked wildly of going on a second strike.

Now no secret was made of the ship owners' intentions to bring in scab labour to work the wharves on lower wages. The government supported the ship owners.

My father and his friends were caught in a vicious pincer because they faced jail under the
Crimes Act
if they went on strike refusing to obey the law.

The arguments at the Port Federation Hall were long and vitriolic. Labor Party supporters bleated that a strike would ruin their chances of being elected. The communists yelled that the Labor Party supporters were bosses' stooges and that capitalism could be overthrown if they only had the courage. The union officials in the Port were afraid of defeat and jail.

Decisions were referred to the Trades and Labour Council in Melbourne. My father snarled that that would be the day when out-of-towners told them what to do. There was no peace in our home as Jock, Pat, Frank, Bernie and my father brawled across the galley table. Occasionally Nathan joined them. He was the quietest of them all but his views only made the rows worse.

I was working on a cartoon when Harry shouted to me from the wharf. I was drawing three figures: a half-starved child, an equally destitute woman, and a man bent double beneath an enormous wheat sack. The woman stood in the doorway of a ramshackle house; the child held an empty bowl. The man bowed under his burden was trudging away from them. On the sack I had inscribed
DEPRESSION
, while the caption read:
Daddy, will they pay you for a fair day's work?
I was arranging and re-arranging the figures, trying to place them in the most telling and dramatic way, endeavouring to convey in a few sparse strokes the destitution of the child and her mother.

Disgust, anger and pity fuelled my drive to create these political cartoons and yet as I worked I felt curiously detached, absorbed entirely in how to make the strongest impact. ‘The emotion,' Miss Marie said, ‘gives way to artistic discipline, and that creates the emotion,
n'est-ce pas
?' She was consoling me because I had confessed to her that I felt almost self-indulgent for enjoying the process of composition.

So I wasn't thrilled to hear Harry shouting for me and worked on until he bounded up the gangplank and across the deck.

‘Judith!' he continued yelling as he burst into the saloon.

I was irritated. ‘I'm working, Harry.'

‘Have you seen the paper?'

‘Yes.'

‘Today's
Despatch
?'

‘Yes.'

He snatched it off the pile of newspapers on the floor at my feet. They were my material and I searched them for ideas.

‘You've seen the advertisement?'

‘Yes. I couldn't have missed the advertisement.'

At seven o'clock that morning my father had roared into the galley where my mother was preparing breakfast. He was waving a copy of the
Despatch
, which he flung on the table, his face twisted with outrage and disgust. ‘Here, Judith, here's material for your cartoons. We knew this was coming, didn't we? Lying bastards. The word's around the Port—I met a few of the blokes—that a train load of scabs came in last night. They'd lined the tracks and chucked a few rocks. Useless, of course.'

Without waiting for breakfast he had rushed off to the Federation Hall.

I had picked up the paper and my mother and I read it. In large black print the advertisement screamed at us, calling for men to apply for work at Lewis & Reid's Timber Yards. The yard was just north of Robinson's Bridge and No.1 wharf at Port Adelaide. The meaning was clear. Scab labour was to be ‘recruited and employed'. As an afterword the
Despatch
made it plain that scab labour (‘volunteer free labour') would be introduced the following Friday.

‘You're doing a cartoon for it?' Harry looked over my shoulder.

‘No, not yet.'

‘But it's today's news.'

I sighed. ‘They take time, Harry. I have to think. I'm doing one about another issue.'

He looked blank. ‘What's more important?'

I sighed again. ‘Give me a break, Harry. I can't produce instantaneous cartoons.'

He looked contrite. ‘Sorry, Judith. But so much has happened in the last twenty-four hours and you're just sitting here drawing, as calm as can be.'

‘Just sitting here drawing,' I mimicked him. ‘Believe it or not, I'm trying to keep calm and work. First my father and now you. What else should I be rushing around doing? Go away, Harry.'

He looked nonplussed. ‘Well, first, you must know, Judith, they brought the scabs in by train last night.'

‘Dad said so.'

‘I went to see. There were quite a lot of us. It was like a Wild West show. Armed police at the doorways of the carriages, riding shotgun.'

‘Guns?' I was appalled. ‘Guns! Here at the Port?'

‘Yes, guns. Wouldn't it make a marvellous cartoon, Judith? You could give it an American touch—
I tell you, pard, we'll beat these coyotes yet
.'

I laughed in spite of myself. ‘It might work, Harry. I'll think about it. The trouble is that I have an overwhelming number of possibilities to draw. You didn't get involved in any violence? No one was shot at?'

‘No. Nathan said we should not get arrested. We have bigger issues to fight for. We must look to the future. We'll know when it is time to make the big sacrifice.'

I looked at him pityingly. ‘A sort of deferred martyrdom?' I said sarcastically.

‘Really, Judith, I don't know why Nathan still cares for you. You are so nasty about him. After all, he did help you get your cartoons printed in the
Despatch
.'

‘He did not, Harry. That was Mrs Danley. Pressure from the Anglican Church, not the communists.'

He was surprised. ‘He told me—gave me the impression …'

‘That he had some importance in my life? Some influence?'

‘Yes. Well, anyway, I suppose it was a misunderstanding.'

‘Sure to have been,' I said.

He grinned. ‘You're becoming like your cartoons—too sharp for comfort. Anyway, come on, I've come to get you.'

‘Come on where? I'm working, Harry. I told you.'

He took the pencil out of my hand and kissed the top of my head. ‘No you're not. You're coming to collect a lot more material. They've got the scabs corralled in the timber yard and the whole town is turning out to have a look.'

‘A freak show?'

‘If you like. But everyone is mad as hell. A trainload of scabs and that filthy advertisement. Everyone wants to see what those scum look like.'

I was cautious. ‘There'll be truckloads of police.'

‘We're only going to look.'

‘You said that about the free speech rally, Harry. You may be only going to look but others might have different ideas.'

‘Oh, come on, Judith. It won't be like Victoria Square. Jock isn't speaking. You'll never have another opportunity like this.' I gave in. ‘I'll dink you,' he said.

I followed him to the wharf and, while he held the bicycle, perched myself precariously on its crossbar. ‘It won't work, Harry. I'll fall off.'

‘Of course you won't. See, my arms will be about you. In a minute, anyway.'

And as I tried to keep my balance by clutching him he leaned towards me and kissed me on the mouth. ‘We should get married one day,' he said casually.

‘Yes,' I agreed, with equal casualness. ‘I'll think about it one day but I have too much to do at present.'

‘Thank you, Judith,' he pretended to be rueful. ‘It's good to know I'm in the queue.'

‘Oh, Harry, you,' I imitated Winnie. We both laughed and I felt comforted that we could always laugh together.

Our journey to the timber yard was perilous and erratic. We lurched across a pothole that nearly tipped us both off. I was laughing hysterically by the time we arrived on the outskirts of the chaotic crowd of men, women and children. Everyone milled around outside the high paling fence, either shoving to see if they could get near enough to jump up and peek over the fence or else eagerly questioning their neighbours as to what they might know or have seen.

Harry pushed through with me and his bicycle and propped it against the fence. ‘Climb up, Judith. Have a look.' He supported the bike and a couple of blokes nearby helped me scramble up onto the crossbar. The three of them supported me so I couldn't fall.

‘What can you see?' They were avid. ‘How many are there? Are they Eyties? Are they scared? Are there police there?'

‘A whole crowd of men,' I relayed.

‘And?' They were eager.

‘They look pretty poor and down and out. And scared.'

‘Good. They should be terrified.' My two helpers grunted with satisfaction. ‘They'll find there's more to be terrified about tomorrow.'

I was urged to dismount so that others could share my good fortune but Harry demanded his right, as it was his bike. He hung on to the top of the fence. ‘There's a few coppers inside,' he reported. ‘They're not taking much notice of us.'

‘They've been ordered to protect the scabs.' Someone next to us was knowledgeable. ‘Full government protection, guaranteed. They've brought in up-country coppers and installed them in the stables down the road, horses on the ground floor, coppers in the loft. Some of them up-country lads have ridden down on their own horses.' He guffawed. ‘Country horses will be next to useless in a crowd riot. They'll panic more than the people.'

He spat at his feet. ‘That'll be a sight to see. A couple of gunshots and you'll not see them for dust. Police horses! I ask you! As they gallop full tilt down the main street of the Port heading for the hills of home.' He snorted and spat again.

The crowd was growing restless. Inactivity didn't suit them. They needed an outlet for their rage. A couple of blokes wrestled with some palings of the fence trying to tear them loose but they only had their bare hands and it was useless. Bikes were in demand and shared around, but only a few managed to see over the fence. Some of the children started to whine; they were bored and tired and wanted to go home. Women, unable to keep them quiet, began to drift away.

A small knot of men formed in the middle of the mob and a stone and a bottle flew over our heads and into the yard. Immediately things livened up. People searched the ground for missiles and a volley of stones, lumps of wood and glass bottles hurtled over the fence accompanied by a loud chorus of ‘Scabs! Scabs! Scabs!'.

The few police, who had hovered at the back of the crowd, grew edgy. Their officer, a local man, tried to calm things. ‘Now, boys,' he admonished, ‘take it easy. There's no point in chucking stones.'

Their cautions were feeble and futile; there were not enough police to be effective. Most of them were inside the yard. The crowd mocked them and they looked helpless and uncomfortable. Jock and Bernie-Benito arrived just when matters began to look more dangerous.

‘Here's real trouble,' I said to Harry. ‘Let's go. All we need now is Jock's rabble rousing.' The fence was a terrifying reminder of the railings in Victoria Square. In a riot we could be pinned against it, trapped again.

‘No,' he said urgently, holding my arm. ‘Wait. I think they've got something else in mind.'

Bernie-Benito edged through the crowd, grinned at Harry, seized his bike and clambered up on it so his head stuck over the fence. Then, in a voice sonorous and resounding, he let fly a harangue in Italian. I didn't understand a word but its passion could not be doubted. I caught the words ‘Mussolini' and ‘fascism' and ‘unions' and ‘
popolo
'. I had never imagined that Bernie's voice could carry with such resonance. We had grown used to the silence imposed on him by his lack of English.

Jock held the bike and smiled about him with satisfaction and triumph. He had indeed pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Everyone listened to the rich cadences of Bernie's Italian as if by sheer effort we could interpret it. He finished, raised his fist as Jock would have done, and launched full-throated into singing
Avanti popolo
.

The police, who like everyone else had been stunned by the unexpected, now mobilised and tried to push through the crowd to grab him. But the crowd closed ranks. Bernie jumped down from the bike. Briefly I saw his head, then, as he had always managed to do, he melted into the crowd. When the police at last reached the fence where he had been he had disappeared. They knew it was no use questioning anyone. The blank, bland faces all around conveyed quite clearly that no one would tell them anything.

That evening I sketched a cartoon of the morning's events at the timber yard. I headed the cartoon ZOO ENTRY. Over a paling fence I drew a crowd of faces looking in on a gaggle of dishevelled men. On the fence I inscribed FREE LABOURERS. One face in the crowd of onlookers asks another,
What strange animals are these?
I sent it to the
Barrier Daily Truth
.

A week later I was to receive my five shillings and a copy of the issue using my cartoon. I didn't think it was my best work but Nathan and Jock, by this time, had printed copies of it in the
Port Beacon
, a small pamphlet they ran off on a duplicator at Nathan's home. Usually the
Beacon
was full of communist theory and urgings to the proletariat to rise up and throw off the shackles of capitalist oppression. But in this issue they printed my cartoon. Harry sold them around the streets and pinned up a copy of the cartoon in shops and hotels. To the people in the Port mockery became a delightful subversion and laughter a secret unassailable power.