Right vs Left in the Tasmanian Liquor Trades Union‪.‬

In Australian labour organisations battles for control have historically been a way of life and have been subjected to considerable analysis, often in terms of power, participation and ideology. (1) The bitterness of these conflicts coloured national politics for many years precipitating the Australian Labor Party (ALP) Split which institutionalised factional politics in the labour movement. (2) The struggles for control which characterised the Tasmanian Branch of the Federated Liquor and Allied Industries Employees Union (FLAIEU commonly known as the Federated Liquor and Allied Trades Union) in the (1970) s involved right- and left-wing ALP influences and activity by the largely Roman Catholic anti-communist activists of the National Civic Council (NCC). (3) They also demonstrate the negative impact of factionalism on industrial effectiveness noted by labour historians as a characteristic of struggles for control in unions. (4) This particular conflict took place in a context in which the right faction had gained ascendancy in the Tasmanian Trades and Labour Council (TTLC) under the leadership of Brian Harradine. (5) Harradine had come to Tasmania as an official of the Federated Clerks Union apparently recruited for this purpose by J.P. Maynes, who as well as being Federal Secretary of the FCU was reputedly the national union campaign director of the NCC. Harradine became State Secretary of a large number of unions which, under TTLC rules giving the smallest organisations a disproportional number of delegates, created a voting block enabling him and his supporters to dominate Tasmanian unionism. (6)