No truck with the Chilean Junta! : direct and indirect trade union internationalist actions, Australia and Britain, 1973-1980

Abstract

When lorry drivers in Northampton slapped the stickers on their cabs declaring "No truck with the Chilean Junta!" they were participating in more than an isolated threat to boycott. They were expressing their identity as internationalists; upholding union traditions of internationalism; and showing support for union policy. Still, there was more: they were taking part in a symbiotic relationship with a social movement. Union action on extra-industrial campaigns is both a longstanding ideological imperative and a practice that predates the resurgence of social movements in the 1960s. Yet since its inception, the Chile solidarity movement had encouraged, planned for, enabled and used trade unions. This thesis compares two such movements in Australia and Britain from 1973-1980. Drawing upon a wide array of archival material and other sources in conjunction with extensive interviewing, this thesis places trade unions at the centre of the solidarity story. It records the actions that unions took for political gain external to their organisation and nation. Social movements, in this case Chile Solidarity Campaigns, were connected to unions by a range of social and institutional ties and organised their activities in an attempt to harness and maximise union support and power.

This thesis provides a series of previously unrecorded or under-recorded case studies of trade union political action. It attempts to define those actions in terms of direct and indirect actions, as characterising social movement or industrial national unionism and as stemming from the ideology of the old or new left. The case studies suggest five main findings. Firstly, that individuals, unions and the Chile Campaigns were locked together in a mutually supportive and legitimating cycle of action. In addition the relationship between unions, social movements and political structures was mediated by 'faddists' and other strategic individuals. Thirdly, that the threat to union core aims and use of union resources were inversely related to the likelihood of internationalist action. Furthermore, sometimes 'Chile' was embraced as a forum in which internal union struggle could be played out separate from industrial issues, and finally, that existing heuristic models and definitions of the relationship between trade unions and social movements need to be refined. Quite aside from these conclusions, this thesis has restored trade union international action to its rightful place in the history of the labour movement in the turbulent years from the fall of Allende to the rise of Thatcher. Important though they were, high profile strategic individuals and committed 'faddists' were a minority in the movement. The majority of those who expressed solidarity were trade unionists. These pages record some of their stories.