Christine Jackman, “Inside Kevin 07″, Melbourne University Press, 2008.
Kathie Muir, “Worth Fighting For: Inside the your rights at work campaign”, UNSW Press, 2008.
There were two campaigns against the Howard Government in the run-up to the last election: the ALP campaign and the ACTU campaign.
These books complement each other insomuch as they provide ‘insider’ accounts of these interlocking but in many ways separate and differing campaigns. Much of the content of each book is based on interviews with participants and both books suffer a bit from being captured by the people their authors interviewed.
Muir, a former union official now an academic, is unabashedly a fan of the union movement and of the Your Rights at Work campaign. In the preface she describes her approach as ’standpoint research’ or ‘engaged journalism’ but nevertheless independent and critical. Although her book is easy to read (’accessible’ in publisher jargon) and a valuable source for anyone interested in contemporary political campaigning, it falls well short of its claim to be a critical assessment.
Muir pretty much always goes with the inflated claims for the campaign made by her union informants from senior ACTU level all they way to grassroots activists. In addition, Muir’s chapter on the Government’s campaign is noticeably weak, reflecting perhaps a lack of access to the other side of politics.
Christine Jackman, a News Limited journalist, provides a much racier account. She brings a novelistic flavour to the exercise which unfortunately rarely rises above the “It was a dark and stormy night” variety. There are descriptions of one ALP official ‘pacing the grimy streets of inner-city Sydney at dawn’ and so on.
In some ways, these books provide very different world views. Muir’s account is full of touching accounts of the ennobling effects on ordinary people of their participation (often after life-long political passivity) in a great and historic campaign. In Muir’s universe, there is a lot of emphasis on ordinary people having conversations about the issues. Happily, the campaign has helped to re-invigorate the union movement and to empower a new generation of activists.
From the union leadership, John Robertson, then Unions NSW, now part of the Rees Government, is quoted in both books talking about re-inventing politics, re-engaging people and so on (see Jackman, p. 129). Robertson was apparently attracted to Rudd’s similar desire to re-invent politics. Much of this re-invention seems little more than a reversion to older (pre-Accord) styles of union activity. Muir quoted officials being amazed at how happy their members are to talk to them (well d’oh).
Jackman’s world, however, is populated with battle-hardened campaigners who believe that winning is (just about) everything. Her ‘characters’ often talk like they are in a ‘Cliff Hardy’ novel: “Oh f*ck. Oh f*ck” (p2). Another character (p194) is from the Left: “the side of the party most protective of its ideological purity – but being pure of heart and out of power had lost its appeal by 2007″. Many of Jackman’s ‘insights’ are similarly tired and lame e.g. on p.105 she tells us “But in politics, perception and mood are at least as powerful as reality”. There you go.
Both books confirm some significant changes in the union movement’s role in politics, and this is the real value of these books for me anyway. The union movement:
- has to be a political power in it’s own right and can not rely on the ALP to secure its agendas
- is more of an interest group than a class-based movement albeit the largest and richest in Australia, this reflects the way ordinary people think about unions as much as anything else and a growing move towards individualism and away from collectivism
- recognises that campaigning solely on workplace issues doesn’t work, these issues have to be linked to people’s family and community concerns
- campaigning on behalf of ‘vulnerable’ workers is much more effective than talking about wages and conditions for the better-paid
So who won the election?
Both books put a strong case for believing that Work Choices was the issue, along with a general mood for change, that brought about Howard’s downfall. And no-one seriously doubts that the union campaign did a lot to make Work Choices a potent issue.
But did it as one activist in Muir’s book says ‘hand ALP victory on a plate’? If it did, of course, then Jackman’s cast of brilliant campaigners were really doing nothing more than playing an unbeatable hand.
Jackman’s insiders make it clear that they had to distance the ALP from the unions. People believe in rights at work and not union power. Mark Arbib, now a Senator says (p137):
“We did a lot of things that unions were hostile to and still very much resent. But it was part of trying to find a way through, to find a balance. It wasn’t a deliberate attempt to say, “here is Betsy the old sacred cow now let’s go slit her throat”.’
It is pretty clear that the ALP strategists saw the union campaign as generating a ‘protest vote’ at best (p128), one that may or may not deliver victory. They believed that the opportunity was there but that the party couldn’t win without a leadership change (p.53). With Rudd as the new, fresh leader (notably without union links) the campaigners had their chance to finally beat Howard. A lot of the campaign was about convincing voters that they could trust Rudd.
Tim Gartrell, then ALP National Secretary, was in charge of the ALP campaign. He gets a lot of coverage in Jackman’s book. In Muir’s book he gets just one mention, right at the end (p.206) where Muir points out that the ALP, including Gartrell, did not give the unions and their campaign any credit for Rudd’s victory. Despite this Muir says the union activists know that “It was the unionists wot won it”.
