BY SUE BULL
MELBOURNE — Readers of the September 14 Age newspaper may have thought they were about to get a real inside story when they saw the front-page teaser: "Craig Johnston: The Making of a Middle Class Revolutionary".
But they would have been severely disappointed that the muck-raking journalist who wrote the article, Andrew Rule, had managed to dig up little more than a series of boyhood stories from erstwhile schoolmates who didn't want to be named.
They might have been expecting to read tales about a ferocious hypocrite: someone with a privileged background, who turned working-class hero and then sold out the workers — or at the very least, some juicy stories about sex, violence and general nastiness.
But by the time any reader got to the end of Rule's two-page "expose" (entitled, "Raging Bull: the making of a North Balwyn Bolshevik", they had learned that Johnston wasn't corrupt. Indeed, Rule had to grudgingly admit that Johnston has "integrity". The article cited one purported former schoolmate of Johnston's as saying: "He turned into a man with an embarrassing sense of justice. He is not motivated by greed at all."
Perhaps that was the real point of the story. Craig Johnston, recently resigned secretary of the Victorian branch of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), can't be bought because he is committed to defending the interests of his union's members, to championing the common interests of the working class and consequently he is really dangerous — but only if you're a boss or a loyal servant of the boss class's interests.
Of course, Rule's article didn't say that, but it did try every other angle to convince readers that Johnston falls outside the pale of bourgeois respectability. Here's the short list: Johnston went to Trinity Grammar School in one of Melbourne's leafy suburbs, but his best friends were the local Greek boys whom everyone else thought were "wogs". These blokes were really tough and used to bash the other kids for calling them "wogs", according to an unnamed teacher. They all barracked for Essendon, at that time a working-class football team, and they were very boisterous. The young Johnston went out with a girl who quite liked him but her father didn't. (Shock! Horror!)
Of course, Rule liberally interspersed this drivel with all the usual anti-"Bolshie" epithets — painting Johnston as violent and frightening — "a street fighter" whose "politics are not so much red as Clockwork Orange". "He looked very Romper Stomper." "He arrived ... dead on time and ready to rumble."
Johnston is the leader of a "militant, splinter group, Workers First", described by Rule as "class warriors who act like feuding bikies" etc., etc.
Just how this "splinter group" was elected to the leadership of the largest branch of the AMWU (with 70,000 members), Rule failed to explain, or even mention.
Then there was guilt by association. The late Norm Gallagher, last national secretary of the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF), is mentioned twice in the article. Clearly, the reader is meant to draw the parallels between Gallagher and Johnston. Both have been militant trade union leaders who led controversial unions and won wage increases and improved conditions for their members. They were hated by bosses, but revered by many of the workers they represented.
Gallagher was found guilty of fraud charges in the mid 1980s. Johnston has been charged with riot, affray, criminal damage and aggravated burglary regarding a series of incidences at Skilled Engineering in June 2001. The implication is clear.
According to Johnston, Rule attempted to draw even closer comparisons with Gallagher as he sought the dirt on Johnston. Johnston was told by old friends nearly a year ago that an Age journalist was asking questions about him. The journalist was asking if Johnston was "on the take", "does he own a beach house?" (a dig at Gallagher, as the fraud convictions referred to building materials for a beach house). But Rule could find nothing, so he concentrated on allegations of violence and political fanaticism.
Indeed, as you read through his article you begin to wonder from where Rule actually got his facts. Barely a single source in the article was named. Supposedly because as one unidentified source says: "I don't want a brick through my window or something worse." Others, it appeared "don't want to be seen telling tales out of school". But is this the truth? How come a journalist like John Pilger quotes every source he uses but Rule can't? Could it be that the facts don't support Rule's smear-job?
And just who is Andrew Rule? He was the journalist who supposedly revealed all about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission chairperson Geoff Clark. Revelations regarding alleged rape and sexual abuse from 20 years in Clark's past provided Rule with the basis for his last big "expose" — allegations subsequently investigated and dismissed by the police.
Andrew Rule is the Age's hatchet man. When the editors of the Age want a job done on someone, they bring in Andrew Rule.
In this case, the Age did need a job to be done because what Rule also didn't reveal was that the Age is very upset with the Victorian branch of the AMWU. According to Johnston and current acting state secretary Steve Dargavel, during Campaign 2000 — the enterprise bargaining campaign which won some of the best conditions for manufacturing workers anywhere in Australia — a bitter dispute erupted at the Age.
"The Age has absolute hatred for the Victorian AMWU and for me", says Johnston. "During the dispute we won back all of the conditions and wages that the previous leadership had lost. We closed the paper down for a night, perhaps one of only about three shutdowns since the paper began 133 years ago. No scabs got in and we cost them about $8 million."
Dargavel believes that the figure may be closer to $10 million. He says that the other milestone involved in the dispute was that printers and maintenance workers employed by the Age united, building solidarity between wings of the union that had been traditionally wary of each other. This solidarity proved invaluable during the current fracas between the state and national offices of the AMWU.
No wonder the Age and other companies are fearful of Craig Johnston, Steve Dargavel, Workers First and the rest of the Victorian AMWU — if they can rebuild the AMWU into a militant, fighting union, imagine what they can help the workers win next year.
And it's not as if the profit-driven corporate media hasn't run such smear campaigns before. The conviction of Gallagher happened during the deregistration of the BLF, when the attack on the union was at fever pitch. The BLF was seen as an obstacle to the imposition of the ALP-ACTU wage-freeze Accord.
Or perhaps readers might remember the more militant days of Laurie Carmichael and John Halfpenny, former leaders of the forerunner of today's AMWU? Johnston remembers when Carmichael was referred to as "the most dangerous man in the country" during the big car company strikes of the late '60s and early '70s.
Halfpenny faced a corruption smear campaign during the late '70s when he was leading the shorter working hours campaign. (It needs to be remembered that during those days the AMWU was the pace setter in terms of wages and conditions. If they won something, then all other unions would attempt to follow suit.)
Gallagher, Carmichael and Halfpenny were all outside of the ALP at the time. Gallagher was in the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), while Carmichael and Halfpenny were members of the Communist Party of Australia.
Rule says of Johnston: "These days, he is a dedicated socialist who doesn't even bother voting Labor on the grounds that he despises the party as much as he does the Liberals."
Johnston freely admits to his membership of the Socialist Alliance. As he says, this is his other crime: "What scares the establishment is leaders that are seen to have popularity and can't be controlled within the ALP. I'm not saying that there aren't some good people in the ALP, but I know being outside the ALP has made me more of a problem."
Big business certainly does not want to see the emergence of a militant, uncontrollable tendency among Australian unions ever again. As Johnston says: "Victoria has become a big problem for the government and the bosses. That's why they want to take out the Victorian unions. It's also no accident that the biggest internal union disputes happen between the unions' national offices and their Victorian branches. The national offices talk left and act right."
Johnston contrasted what is likely to happen in Victoria if Workers First runs Campaign 2003 with the outcome if AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron and his National Left faction run the campaign: "If we're running the union we can pull off a good campaign. We'll consult the members and work with other unions. Cameron won't work with other unions. There'll be no industry-wide campaigns. The government will get what they want. We'll be back to company by company EBAs."
Clearly, the big moneyed interests in this society have a lot more to fear than your average reader of the Age from the likes of Craig Johnston.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, September 25, 2002.
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