Poem: Ode to Labour History

 

1891 – The Squatters get all hearty

We take the bait

Get repressed by the state

But out of it

Arose our Party

 

1911 – we get serious

The cane fields salted

With Miners, then letters read

To the cutters

Who win their strike business

 

1935 – The Weil’s Rears its head

The Communists fight

While our officials fly

But to beat this disease, we find

That it is better to be Red than Dead

 

1955 – Left and Right

Unite and Fight

Against the scabs within the movement

And in wake of the meeting

Of these two strangers

Our shearers win fair wages

 

 

 

 

1969 – Freedom’s fight

Our Clarrie refused to pay his fines

So we stuck to course

We struck with force

And to the Penal Powers said; “Good Night”

 

1972 – Clancey gets the arse

The New Left expels the Moscow Line

And the Green Bans hit full force

 

1983 – The Accord

The strike rate dives

Wages not far behind

All the save the bosses

And their boards

 

1998 – The Pactrick’s Blue

Blackshirts ransack us

The Scabs; they insult us

But we beat them back, just barely

 

2007 – Workchoices defeated

By half hearted general strikes

And that is why

The election saw Howard ousted

 

 

 

 

And Since then? Nothing. We’ve been rooted.

But history is not over yet

And so I ask you, now

if you’ll help us rebuild

THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT?

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