Asger || Brisbane IWW became a General Membership Branch in January 2019, and then became the most successful branch in Oceania besides Perth in over a decade.
This started when a couple of interested members from ‘Unite!’ got together with existing IWW members, and in a branch meeting at my house in October 2018 decided to relocate our meetings to Unite’s organising space called Common House in Fortitude Valley.
Early Days
Over the next couple of months saw a quick increase in IWW membership from Unite members. They started participating due to the new location of the meeting at Common House, Fortitude Valley. This was valuable in connecting quickly to new people with an interest in revolutionary libertarian politics.
By January 2020 we had enough support to form a General Membership Branch, and we signed the Charter in late January 2020.
In late January 2019, Bill, the dual card member from RAFFU and Unite member, brought the situation of Deebing Creek to IWW’s attention.
Then the police moved in on Deebing Creek to occupy it and arrest the elders in mid-February 2019. Steve the dual card delegate from CFMEU spontatiously called a blockade, and got 50+ unionists onsite within the hour to stop the police. Using new IWW contacts and his existing union contacts, workers from over from 12 other unions spontaniously joined the blockade, bring the number of unionists onsite into the hundreds by the end of the day. They resisted the police and escourted the Yagura-Ugapul elders back on-site. One of the heros of the day, was both a CFMEU meber and local aboriginal man who climbed a tree for 8 hour and tied up police resouces.
The unionists then took phyisical possession of the site at Deebing Creek for the next several days to prevent the police re-entering it. In the process they rebuilt the protest camp to a professional quality …. all without any form of centralised organising committee or initial formal branch endorcement. The formal Union branch endorsements came after the event. This was nothing less then a monumental win and solid demonstration of the strength of IWW organising tactics.
Chemist Warehouse
In late March 2019, IWW members became aware of the workplace strike at Chemist Wharehouse. They went onsite at Eagle Farm, introduced themselves and physically supported the picket, emphasising direct action. This lasted weeks, and it was the Unite! members of IWW that were able to spend the most time there and maintain a consistant presence. NUW eventually won the strike and explicetely stated it was the support and direct action of the IWW members helped them win the strike. That IWW presence and direction actions gave the workers confidence, and a vision of militant disobediance. Chemist Wharehouse workers won the strike big time, with one of the biggest pay rises with a wide array of improvement in conditions given to the workers for a very long time.
This was nothing less then a second monumental win, and another solid demonstration of the strength of IWW organising tactics within a short period of time. IWW principles put into direct action, and the solid dedication and grassroots attitude our members won over the Chemist Wharehouse workers. One of the NUW organisers Tom R. described the difference between our branch and the Melbourne branch, saying the Melbourne Branch acted no different to SAlt, standing back as if it was another rally. However Brisbane IWW hooked in as equals and took on the cops directly. In this situation the energy and personality drive of Fergal held this event together, and drove it to success
2ndQuarter 2019
As our new branch now had an exploition of energy and members, it was difficult to keep up with this wave and some people were becoming exhausted. Also we hadn’t really got a solid grasp of administration and melding of values/cultures. I also wasn’t really in a position to do the admin work required, but was hooking in anyway to the best of my ability. This was a unique situation, and I wanted to to run with the energy as much as possible.
It was from April/May 2019 and onwards that the sub-cultureal traditions of different socialists and Unite members began coming out, to subtly push how meetings and the IWW should function. It was then that some of old school IWW members began to have ‘sub-cultural conflicts’ with some of the Unite! members. Nothing serious or overt, more a general sense of ‘passive-aggressive blocking’ and being on the ‘social outer’ during our own meetings by some Unite! members. It should be noted this was not the case with all of Unite members, many being very personable, co-operative and just good people.
I also was starting to have a few quiet frustions, but the time was so busy, and I was already stressed from a long-term domestic absue situation, I had almost no mental space and time for it. I just wanted to see it all capitalise on our wins, and see new people take over responsibilites to grew the One Big Union.
Preventing abusive people joining. Early in the year of 2019, a few of the MUA members approached me to raise a concern they had with another IWW member. They had a conflict with this member at sea while working. There was a minor disagreement, and this other member snuck up behind one of the MUA guys on ship with a blunt heavy object (can’t remeber exactly what it was) pretended to swing it, and then whispered in the MUA members ear something to the effect that he could have killed him then and there.
I said OK, well this guy is on the books now as a member, and we haven’t really figured out how to deal with this. I’ll raise it with the others, which I tried to do. But it was so busy there wasn’t much time to discuss it. So at a meeting I proposed a process, where existing members can descrietly name someone they consider dangerous or abusive and would not want to be a member. We then maintain a database, and if anyone ever tries to join they get blacklisted. It was a principle of just trusting when someone says ‘Dont let this person in’.
When I proposed during meeting time, Fergal and Andrew both said that they didn’t do things in Unite like that, and they wanted to think about it first. The issue never made it back up again at a meeting, in part because it was so busy. But also no one else gave it more thought, and the MUA guys didn’t come back to another meeting.
The Yellow Vest Flag Incident: Sometime early in 2019, the Yellow Vest movement was happening. IWW member Liilian decided to become an organiser, in part to stop the neo-nazi’s taking it over. IWW Brisbane attended a rally in King George Square as a group. We meet before hand, had a briefing discussion and joined in. Myself and Maurrie carried IWW Flags and marched with the crowd, which contained quite a number of local boneheads & friends. The Unite crew go scared and decided to leave, sitting it out in a cafe nearby and watching.
Half-way threw the event, I got a phone call from Nick saying they wanted us to put away the flags, that it was putting them in danger. Now this was phrased more like an order rather then just raising a concern. Maurrie got his back up and said no one tells him when and where he can fly a flag, and I agreed with him. Besides, at the briefing no one raised any concerns about the flags or other behaviours despite knowing that we were going to march among the Yellow Vests with them out. Also they (Unite members) were safely out of sight, with hundreds of cops and cameras between them and anyone else. They weren’t really in any danger, and if they felt anxious its their responsibility to mange their own feelings. At the time I thought ‘how embarrasing, imagine if the MUA or CFMEU dual carder where here with their flags, and a Unite member told them to hide their flags from neo-nazis. ‘
After the event, a couple of Unite members did not let up about it, saying we put them in danger and we should have done what we were told. They were also passively dismissive of elderly IWW member Lillian, not wanting to talk to her despite being greeted and introduced. We disagreed politely about the flag and I thought that was it. But one member continued on about this for weeks and tried to use meeting process to punish us. Even though I personally quite like that individual, this behaviour is by definition that of a Leninist, or any other form of authoritarian politics, rather then anarchist.
May Day 2019 was a huge win as well, with MUA stopping the march to allow IWW and “Ratbags” (thanks Bill and Unite organisers) to enter the march on Ann St infront of Common House. The MUA delegates were also dual card IWW, who then doing a public talk about inclussion to transgenders and general solidarity to everyone. We sat at their stall and shared beers and sausages.
I set-up an IWW stall which was incredibly successfull, with lots of new sign-ups, and hundreds of flyers being taken. HOWEVER, at the end of the day the only people that stuck around to help pack-up the stall were old IWW members … NO ONE FROM UNITE HELPED, they all went back to Common House to keep up the party. This pattern continued.
As the year went on, IWW Brisbane began intervening in hosptiality workers with some success, as well as supporting the ETU strike in West End and a range of solidairty pickets for various industrial issues. Fergal was the delegate and very good at it, perfect person for the role. Bill started doing the ‘Workers Power’ radio show on 4ZzZ. It was a great win to see the eletricity workers turn huge speakers into their wharehouses and play Bills show very, very loudly. IWW Brisbane was kicking real goals within the organised and unorganised working class.
Feminism: Part One
At International Womens Day 2019, an IWW/Unite! member ‘Melody’ claimed ‘victory’ in leading the IWD march in the face of what she called ‘transphobic RadFems’. Melody had publicaly identified as a transwomen, but delibately refused to present as female. The arguement being something like “I’m a women on the inside, you should accept me regardless of how I look”. Ok fair enough.
However, this upset alot of women across Brisbane generally, that someone presenting and acting as a male was claiming leardship of IWD march. This included a couple of old school IWW members who were quietly lossing patients with what they saw as a general arrogance, and agism of a (minority) couple of Unite members. In particular, let’s remember many of these women had done it hard through struggle to undo patriachy through the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, when Australian patriachy had a particularly all-embracing ‘edge’ to it. Remeber Merle Thorton locking on to Royal Exchange Hotel in Toowong.
While I support transwomen being represented in the march, this way or method the Unite people went about IWD basically justified the transphobic arguements and alienated a lot of partipants. That this was just “men in dresses, trying to take control over women organising spaces”, more patriachy again.
This argument becomes particularly relevant, as I heard about a year or so later on, that Melody decided she wasn’t actually a transgender female anymore, but was actaully male after getting a girlfriend. This means that technically the ‘anti-trans’ arguement was correct, except that Melody didn’t even present as female and didn’t even put on a dress. In this instance, we have someone who was actually male, using the facade of being transgender to put themselves into important organisational role over a womens event, and avoid critic through claiming the victim ‘oppressed gender’status.
I will stress that other transgender members of Unite did not behave like this, and they deserve every effort to be included and respected in IWD.
It is important to note, at this time about April or May we had a new delegates election, old IWW member Maurrie ran for Treasurer. After the meeting he talked to me about how he was noticing the body language of various Unite members, particular Andrew and Melody and some of their friends. They didn’t publically oppose him, but he feel they did not actually support him either, and they never indicated that they did.
Maurrie then quit, saying he wasn’t going to bother with it anymore, especially with what he felt was a passive-aggressive hosility from the Andrew/Melody block. He then began some transphobic rants on Facebook in reaction to Melody’s behaviour at IWD. I couldn’t support that position of his and blocked his facebook feed.
As a result of Maurrie quiting, I took on the role of Treasure because no one else would do it. This actually pissed me off, because I didn’t want the extra work, and Maurrie used to work for the ATO. He had genuine skills, interest and time for the role. Plus Maurrie was a honest person and solid unionist, and it hurt to see him leave because of this situation. This event increased my stress and workload.
I’ll also note, that at the time (February- onwards+ 2019) ‘Melody’ wanted to be the Women’s Officer. She also worked in Information Technology and was well paid (but slow on paying the dues). I had expliectely stated numerous times, that the majority of our female membership lived in middle to outer suburbs, and were working mothers … they physically could not attend meetings mid-week in Fortitude Valley.
On various occasions I had asked both Melody and Andrew to set-up routine video conferencing tech for our meetings so that those women, and other people generally could particpate … but they never did it. I tried on occasion, but lacking skills and time was never able to do it properly enough so that they could viabley particpate. I consider this structural sexism, as the ‘Womens Officer’ had the skill to facilitate other womens particpation, but never bothered to do it, for what ever excuses.
I’ll note now that at one meeting (can’t remember when exactly) Melody shouted down Robyn during a meeting because she used the word ‘Tranny’. Now Melody had jumped down her throat in an overt hostile way, which shocked everyone including myself. No one knew what to say and Melody was not appologetic. Robyn is an elderly women who was on the front line of trans/gay/feminist actions during the 1970’s and 1980’s, when things were really rough. She has old friends from that time who still call themselves “Tranny’s”. She was also a union delegate for the Teachers Union, and helped set up the first schools for aboriginal kids on Mornington Island. This is a completely outragious way for a Womens Officer to treat another women in a meeting, especially one who bangs on loudly about opposing sexism.
Feminism Part Two: Let’s Deconstruct These Events
I say that Melody’s behaviour and general attitude showed complete disrespect and disregard to Robyn and her experiances for the sake of PC purtianism. Her/his behaviour at IWD as supported by Unite, actually gave validation to the transphobic arguements, and actively increased transphobic feelings among a large number of individuals. That (s)he activiely sort out the role of Womens Officer, but never actually did anything with the role expect pronoun the desire to “confront the partriachal behaviour on the email list”. And (s)he never tried to connect with any of the female IWW members who were not also in Unite.
Now let’s couple this with the fact that a few times I asked her/him to help clean-up around Common House (s)he always refused, prefering always to go drink beers and chat with the boys. With this behaviour (s)he may as well have been ‘one of the boys’. That this behaviour never raised a comment from the other boys in the crew, who are incredibley fast and uncompromising to pull out the PC beating stick to ‘Oppose Patraichy and Sexism’ in public.
One other small example of sub-cultural conflict, was the push to do the ‘what is your pronoun’ introductions at the begining of meetings. Obviously no one was transphobic, or argued against it. But this little process began annoying some of the dual carders and older IWW members, perciving it mostly as a waste of time and pointless – they already knew who was transgender, why keep repeating the process as a formality? Besides what business is it for anyone what your sexuality is? That’s not important, what matters is what you do, and how we organise.
So what we have in practise, is a male individual who spent sometime telling people they were transgender, using that Identity to take on roles of what would be publically visible “important”roles of leadership/office bearer representing Women; verbally denegrating women in public for not using ‘correct language’; not doing any of the ‘boring’ behind the scenes tasks involved in maintaining these position of representation. These are textbook defenition of partiarchal behaviour and vandgardist behaviour.
In this instance when things changed and it no longer suited, this indiviudal became male again, without any real or substantial changes. Now I am all in support of people being free to explore their sexually and gender identity. But also its abit similar in substance to Upper Class people who play ‘poverty tourist’, kinda like that song “Common People” by Pulp. They indulge, have an exprience without any real danger or consequence, and “if you call Daddy he can stop it all”.
Now that’s fine …. sorta. But not if you are then going on to claim to represent Women in public events, women who have generally done it hard, and do not have the luxury of just putting back on the pants to get out. In this case it is just entirely dismissive of these womens experiances and struggle, its just entitled self-engratiation.
I could give the benefit of the doubt and just let it go saying, well at the time (s)he was just exploring themselves and felt female then, made a mistake aka tratment of Robyn et al and decided, ‘Hey Its Not Really Me. But this is a generosity that (s)he and others at Unite do not extend to anyone elses ‘human failures’, especially when it comes to the why JS was treated (see The Begining of the End). Which makes it a situation of double standards depending on who’s in the boys club, that lead on to the trashing of Brisbane IWW.
I’ll add that in June 2021, Andrew and some Unite members were at East Brisbane Bowls Club for a punk gig. Robyn was working picking up glasses that night and went over to say Hello. A couple of the other guys were friendly and chatty in return. But she says Andrew just glared at her, giving her a death stare. Within the world of Identity Politics, I guess you could call this behaviour a Patriachal Micro-Aggression.
Mid-year IWW Brisbane began supporting Extinction Rebellion,produced a pamphlet/statement, got new friends. But I’ll again note, that when prisoner solidarity was called for XR members, there weren’t any original Unite members turn up. Jaxom being an exception, but he started from XR. On one occasion I was chatting to Andrew, who experessed an opposition to XR and how they organise, and I began wondering if he was quitely shit-talking XR around Unite which would explain the lack of arrest solidarity.
But regardless, there was solidarity shown by other members. And when Nick got arrested for an XR action, it took only a couple of days to raise the $300 fine. In fact we got $500, more then he needed and I had to ask people to stop sending money.
So the ‘sub-cultural, non-event conflicts’ slowly evolved into basically just cold-shoulder refusing to engage type behaviours. Many of the dual card unionists just stopped turning up to meetings. A couple suggested that Common House wasn’t a comfortable space to just relax in. Bill and Fergal were the main personalitiies, they that did not behave like this and kept healthy connection to other workers.
For example, a large indigenous rally was organised later in the year at Queens Park (which I can’t remember what it was about anymore). I had made contact with some new people wanting to meet up at that rally. I wanted to get IWW flags so that they could find me in the huge crowd. I asked Andrew to open up Common House and get me the flags and a few pamphletes (no stall). He passively refused suggesting something snide about cultural appropriation. I tried to get another Unite member to open up so I could get flags, and this guy said he need to ask permission first. WTF, these are our Union flags I don’t need permission from anyone to access them. Again, this is just Leninist organising, not anarchist.
So I was blocked from doing this small action at the aboriginal rally, and as a result couldn’t find these potential members. Ironically I did not see a single Unite member there in solidarity, plus one of the aboriginal speakers basically called for One Big Union and working class solidarity across racial lines to oppose the government … essentially what the IWW is about. I’d have given him a pamphlet if I could get them.
Personally, as the year went on, I was getting increasingly frustrated at not getting any support or assisstance to anything I was organising from certain Unite members. When I organised the History of the IWW open discussion with Paula and Bob Carnegie, not a single Unite member turned up. Also I went out of the way to produce and supply hundreds of posters to certain Unite members, who had promised to help put them up. However they never put any up any to the best of my knoweldge, and they returned a huge pile of these same posters to me after the event. Were they just taking the piss now? Why not just keep the posters as scrap paper rather then put the effort in to return them?
I had also begun to organise a National Conference for IWW for May Day 2021. Got only one person interested in helping out. It was gunna be shit, and I was glad Covid-19 could cancel the event.
The Beginning of the End
Towards the ending of the year 2019, we had acknolwedged the need for ‘shadow positions’ of people to help support adminstration roles. IWW organised an informal ‘admin group’ to do this of about 5 people, including Andrew managing Membership database and dues. I was still being Treasurer and Inter-Branch delegate. Robyn was Secretary with support from Darryl. Fergal was the delegate, and Melody was still being Womens Officer and also invisible at the task, still no video conferencing for outer suburban members.
Fergal had been doing a great job at connecting with lots of different people across different unions. And did a great job at organising the intervensions and support rallys for hospitality workers at the time.
Fergal was leaving Australia for UK in January 2020. He was resigning as Delegate and we had organised elections for adminstrations roles and new delegates in January 2020. Steve from CFMEU had openly put his hand up to become the new delegate. I was suggesting we have a couple of delegates to shadow to properly keep communication networks open with new members, and across branches. I was much less flambouant in my role as the ROC delegate. I didn’t really want to do it at the time, still wanting a break from burn-out etc.
In mid-December 2020 I recieved a phone call from an old Brisbane Solidarity Network member. She wanted to know if I’d been talking to other old BSN members and current IWW member JS. I said no, whats happening? She told me about a huge physical fight her and her partner had with him after going to the pub. That she was very upset about it, and had recieved some angry text messages from this person recently. Did I know anything about it?
I said I didn’t know anything about it, and that I don’t really talk to JS at all. She went on to say she didn’t want to have anything to do with JS anymore. But she also did not want him to be kicked out of the IWW either. Basically she didn’t want to pursue a vendetta or repurcussions, but didn’t want to be in the same room as him ever again either. I said ok then, and thought that was it.
Now we are at the January 2021 IWW meeting, which was to elect new delegates, admin roles and I hoped to talk about our future … what’s next people? I was genuinely excited, especially as CFMEU Steve had put his hand up to be delegate, and he was perfect for the role. And we had the numbers to begin organising our first Industrial Union with the construction workers.
There were a lot of people at this meeting in Common House, upwards of 20-25 people. There were a fair few CFMEU dual carders there, and other non-Unite faces I hadn’t seen in awhile, including JS and his father. About ten minutes into it, Andrew gets up, walks around the room and quietly tells JS he has to leave the meeting and Common House straight away. Andrew was subtle, I didn’t even notice.
I only knew about it when CFMEU Steve tapped me on the shoulder and told me that this had happened, that he thought it was bullshit to do this in the middle of the meeting, and that him and the CFMEU were leaving as well in protest. I didn’t know what to do or make of the situation at first.
But I made a snap decision to not make a scene during the meeting, rather I’d talk to Andrew quietly afterwards. I regret that decission. I should have stood up and called bullshit then and there, pointing out this broke IWW process, that nowhere in our constitution was anyone able to tell people to leave a meeting without aprior standing reason.
As a result, there wasn’t an election, it was to be deffered till the next meeting. No administration roles had been asigned. There wasn’t any productive discussion about moving forward. But we went through the meeting motions anyway, and most people didn’t understand what had happened.
Afterwards when I talked to Andrew about it was the first time I had heard that Unite had banned JS from being in Common House during their December meeting. It seems no one had told JS either. I told Andrew that this was shit process, that if there was any concerns about JS it should have gone through a Grievance Proceedure, that other IWW people should have been told before the meeting, including JS. That it was outragious behaviour that sabotaged an imporant meeting, espcially when those Unite members were also IWW office bearers and admin team. At the very least, wait until afterwards to prevent disruption to everyone else.
At this point Andrew lost it abit, and went on an anti-working class tirade, saying stuff like he’d rather see the CFMEU members leave then make Common House unsafe for transpeople (like when did that ever become an issue? The Dual Card guys were nothing but welcoming and friendly inhouse to everyone) . That he wanted to see more Identity Politics in the IWW, rather then this Union worship; that Unite had come to a concensus on the issue and he couldn’t break that.
Andrew insisted then that JS could not come to IWW meetings while IWW meet in Common House. He banged on a bit about protecting women and keeping IWW a safe place from sexist abuse. He said that alot of women would not participate if JS was allowed to return. This ignoring the fact we just had a huge turnout in the meeting room, and Andrew/Melody not enabled video conferencing so that more people (including the working mothers) could participate.
At this point I called Andrew on his hypocracy of signing up Tom M to the IWW, when I had explicetely ask him not to, due to Tom physically attacking me on three different times while at Unite, then sexually assaulting me on a seperate occasion. Andrew denied that I had said this to him, which also makes him a lier.
Ironically the times Tom M physically assaulted me was when I beat him in arguements about the IWW, which he was denegrating. Tom would then loss his shit, and either punch or try to eye gouge me. Why would Tom even want to join the IWW, when he was ideologically opposed? And the same for Andrew now that he was honest about his views on workers? The only reason I can think is a type of ideological entryism, the group was working, had lots of members and resources. Again a type of neo-leninist behaviour.
After the January 2020 meeting, I approached a couple of other Unite members about their December meeting to ban JS from coming to Common House. Almost all of the had either not heard about it, and had heard about it but could not share any details as to why JS was banned. This demonstrates that there wasn’t any real concensus on the issue, as Andrew had stated.
Darryl had to dig up the Unite minutes, and saw that JS was banned for a rather serious allegation of sexual assault. After seeing this, I talked to some of the people who were at that meeting, including Jaxom and Bill who said yeah they remember it being brought up, but couldn’t talk more about the details, that they had just agreed and went along with the decission. Again so much for ‘consensus’.
Fergal was the delegate at the time, and it was his role to share this information. But he was busy getting ready to leave the country, celebrate Christmas with the family etc and it is reasonable to pass it off the situation as a miscommunication.
However Andrew clearly knew about the situation as well. He could have acknowledged it was a miscommunication as well, and a poorly handled situation. It would have been easy compromise to make a concession that JS be able to attend IWW meetings while this went through a proper Greivance Proceedure, and Unite could talk about the issue more at their next meeting to resolve the situation.
By now Andrew just assumed the role of Common House/Unite leader, making decisions on behalf of Unite without any obvious consultation with the rest of the group. He dug his heals in, got on his high horse and refused to make any type of compromise, or acknowledge there were any problems with the way he handled the situation. Regardless, we began an IWW Greivance Procedure anyway, most of this was handled by Darryl.
We had set-up a proper Greviance Meeting in mid-January 2020, and set aside half of a Sunday afternoon on a date which Andrew and Shaun had agreed to. A couple of hours before the meeting Andrew texted in saying he was going up the coast instead. So we couldn’t properly have a discussion then, as a result we spend the next month just going forward and backward.
During this time more allegations about JS behaviour came forward, more then had been initially raised. I suspect a fair bit of rumour mill/gossip circle was going on now from certain people to justify their stance. This is a big problem for me, that ‘trial by gossip’ is a toxic culture to practise, and taken to its logical extension is responsible for a lot of atrocities humanity has seen in the past.
Darryl did a good job at being impartial, and talking to everyone involved. He had decided that JS had shown remorse and was making a genuine attempt to change his behaviour via stopping drinking and seeing a psycologist who vouched for him. That we should forgive the past behaviour, with certain conditions attached and zero tolerance for any repeat. By this stage it is February 2020, and Andrew is still refusing to allow JS into Common House, Steve is refusing to go to Common House if JS is still banned. So we don’t have a February meeting, and no one is doing any organising or administration tasks.
So we scratch around for a new meeting venue and quickly for the March 2020 meeting. Darryl gets us into the Greens Office on Annerly Road, Clarence Corner. Prior I have a quick discussion with him and Steve about whether to send a public email, saying the situation was resolved. I do this and describe the situation breifly for trasparentcy and that IWW will be meeting elsewhere from now on. But I include langauge that says JS did not commit acts of sexual abuse, in an attemt to address the rumour mill.
Now this is a fact, JS didn’t do any act of sexual assault. However this causes more antagonism from the ‘ban JS faction’ of Unite. I’m now hearing stories of him hanging around Common House at punk gigs and stalking women on their way home, which is behaviour I never heard raised during the Greviance Proceedure meetings.
Almost nobody turns up to the March 2020 meeting. It is also when Covid-19 is beginging to become a thing. I would need to go back through the minutes to be sure, but from memory the only people who attended was myself, Darryl, Shawn (close friend of Andrew & Unite member), Melody who for the first time set-up a video conferencing call but with Tilde from Melbourne who is the new ROC secretary, and Melody’s former lover, I’m assuming this as I saw them making out during May Day in Brisbane.
Tilde proccedes to just berrate us for causing this shit storm. At this stage, I’ve seriously had enough, feeling brow beaten and burned-out and I have no interest in arguing, and just go sure whatever. Nothing achieved, discussed or resolved. I’d have to dig up old minutes for details. Darryl now has the shits cause neither Steve, JS nor anyone bothered to turn up, and he had invested a lot of energy in this, all while his young baby is sick AND he is working full-time.
I’ll note though that no time did Tilde talk with me or any other non-Unite member to about what was happening in the branch when she took over as ROC-Delegate. Never prior to january meeting, or any time afterwards. Her only source of information was through her friends in Unite, which is the definition of an inner-circle social cliche.
At this point I am going to repeat the absolute hypocracy of this inner-circle of friends acting stounch and uncompromising to ‘protect people against sexual/physical assault’, when they actively turn a blind eye to Tom M treatment of myself in Common House and at a different location. I have told various people around Unite and BSN about his past behaviours towards me, and at best it registers a shrug. I very excplietely told Andrew this while I was teching him how to maintain the database, and he went and signed Tom M up anyway.
This just demonstrates that this whole situation has nothing to do with ethics, or maintaining standards of behaviour to prevent abuse. Rather it is a case of ‘posturing’ and going after ‘low hanging fruit’ to virtue signal to the echo chamber. To the best of my knowledge Tom M is still an active member of Unite, and no one has confronted him about his personal character.
The Final Nails in the Coffin
But this isn’t the end YET. Tilde then starts up a group email with only select few IWW members, which includes Steve CFMEU and her favourite friends in Unite, and continues to berate us. She is specifically targeting Steve, and after a few rounds of extended exchanges she starts personally denegrating Steve as some sort of rape apologist and explicetely tells the CFMEU members to fuck off.
At this point Steve just goes, you’re insulting me and my members, I’m out and taking my members with me. And then the CFMEU members all quit sending in personal emails. At this stage it is just overt bullying, and the Unite crew are just sitting back watching. Without a doubt Andrew got what he wanted now, which was kicking out the unionists, and establishing his variety of Identity Politics over IWW. This is again overt Leninism in practise waving a Black Flag.
I try to engage Tilde over the following weeks, and explain the situation in detail, explain the break in process, and she just goes on about how she needed to ‘put on her big boots’ to kick out the mysoginists. She also states she wishes she had just done this in Melbourne earlier to kick out Ben Debney. And she begins questioning my personal character as well. All this is straight up bullying.
Interestinglu at first Tilde claims to know all about the many instances of JS being ínnappropriate around women from old BSN friends. Now I point out that myself and Steve where old BSN members, and I wanted to knew who she was talking about, and what she had heard? Tilde refuses to tell me, which I interpret as either she is just making up stories to cover/validate her behaviour, or Tom M has been in her ear with exagerated stories/Chinese Whispers. I can’t think of anyone else in BSN Tilde could have actually meet.
At no stage does Tilde ever have a go at Darryl, nor acknowledge his existance or opinions in the Greivance Procedure. Nor did she talk about the details of the Proceedure and the behaviours that lead to this situation. She never has a go at any of the Unite members for breaking process and the Consitituion. Her criticism are one-sided and personal targeting myself and Steve. That somehow this whole situation was just Steve and his CFMEU mates forming a boys club protecting an abuser.
I found all this was very hard and stressful, as I was already fully triggered by my domestic abuse situtuation, and this was massively compounding the stress from my PTSD.
I’ll add that Tildes behaviour has also going beyond her role in the Constitution, that Branches are autonomous and had the right to manage themselves without outside interferance. Her behaviour was totally a form of personal bullying and inappropriate for the role she was in. It was behaviour more inline with Leninist organising a ‘çultural purge’ .
Around the time of the April 2020 meeting, Shaun and Andrew had arranged for a video conferencing meeting of IWW Brisbane. Interesting that they now had the motivation to do it, but never before.
However they arranged it at a time that was different from our normal meeting time. They did not announce it on the email list, which was supposed to happen. Instead they sent a bunch of personal invites out just a couple of hours before the meeting … and I didn’t get one, nor did a couple of other non-Unite people. As a result only a few inner core Unite people attended.
When I found out about this video conference meeting, I got a copy of the minutes and spent a bit of time quizzing Shaun about the how and whys. This did piss him off, but I still have screen shots of his text messages.
As a result I decided this April meeting was just a Leninist style power play. I had been trying to give the benefit of the doubt. But it was too much when Shaun said they didn’t publish the time and date to the email list to prevent CFMEU members from possibly attending.
Now the IWW is meant to be an open participation Union. The people that should be partipating are the actual members if they want to. And they need to know when and where a meeting is, so that they can participate. A mass message, that doesn’t make it to all members, just a couple of hours before the event is delibrately designed to prevent people participating. Either it was a delebrite manipluation, or they are just incompetant.
Shaun had also said that they didn’t include people who hadn’t paid their dues. This was also bullshit as I’m still the treasurer and have the bank account plus the (poorly updated) membership database. So I know who hasn’t paid dues, and that included a couple of the Unite members that attend this video conferencing meeting. Also IWW membership is historically transcient, as such people are not banned from attending meetings just because they aren’t in good standing.
So I interpreted all this as a classic leninist style ‘take-over’ bid, it was an attempted coup as such. But they couldn’t get rid of me yet, or Darryl, because we had the bank account.
After this and the last emails from Tilde, I really had enough. There was no salvaging the IWW in this sort of situation, the dual union members had gone, and these particular Unite members were set on taking it over and making it their own with their anti-worker ideology. And they had the gossip channel for other Unite members, and demonstrated an ability to bully good honest union organisers with some vile character assasination and a PC beating stick. For example, Melody’s treatment of Robyn.
I’d been through enough of that from the past. So ny the end of April or start of May, I drafted and sent one final email to the IWW email list, and to the ROC email list. I explained my position, my problem with the behaviours of Tilde and this Unite “central commitee”. I told everyone how and why the CFMEU members quit. I said I was quitting for these reasons, that I stood with solidairty with Steve and told our members to stop paying their dues if they agreed.
I have to admit it kinda broke me abit, after seeing all the good things that had happened in the past year, and seeing all my work over the years being turned into trash.
Within a few hours I got quite a number of supportive text messages and a few supportive phone calls. I understand afterwards Shaun, Andrew and friends got on the phone to try and invite members to the next IWW meeting. And they must have been methodical about it. I know this cause even Rosco got an invite and he only had a home phone, no mobile no email.
No one deposited their dues in the bank account in May. So I then approached Darryl about closing the account, and transfering the money to ROC. That I didn’t want my name attached to it incase some future bullshit happened with that money. Darryl initially agreed, but then changed his mind. I think he thought there was hope to revive the group. So I just removed myself from the account, and I don’t know what happened to the money in the bank account since.
One Year Later
I have heard through chatting with people that Andrew/Unite made a proclomation that IWW style politics was no longer relevant for revolutionary struggle. I have also been told that Andrew has banned serval different people from attending Unite/Common House because they disagree with him, or have the ‘wrong politics’, including a woman. Well so much for feminism then, and I bet this didn’t make it to the Meeting Minutes for consensus.
I’ve also been told that Unite threatened with The Fortitude Music Hall, with Cancel Culture forcing them into removing a historical photo of ‘The Fortitude’ sailing ship, because it represented settler colonialism.
Nick and a few Unite members say they have started a new group called ‘Meanigin Anarcho-communism’ don’t know what they do, or if they function as a seperate group to Unite, or just as a tendancy.
Anti-Poverty Network started up again, and a friend went along to the meeting. She said they say all the right things and so far looks like a promising project.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRrk77ko1tc
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