The passing of Norm Gallagher provides an opportunity for labor activists
to look back on the life and times of Gallagher wihout the heat and
bitterness that divided unionists at the time of the deregistration of the
BLF. I feel that I can speak with authority about the contribution of Norm
Gallagher to the working lives of builders labourers and workers in the
wider blue collar movement.
I make that claim because I was one of his contemporaries. As a member
of the Federal Management Committee of the BLF all through the turbulent
70s and 80s I knew Normie well. I knew him as an insecure man from the
hard side of the tracks. Normie for all his hard faced militancy was a
lost soul as an individual. He was poorly educated, culturally ignorant
and narrow minded. At the same time he could display a large heart to a
hard luck story.
He was the man who hoarded possessions which brought him little joy. He
bought 2 VCRs because someone told him that having 2 was better than 1
in case you needed to copy a tape. Of course he never did. I remember
him buying a stereo system which he never switched on until one night he
brought some companions home after dinner. He did not know how to turn
the machine on and had to ring his Secretary at 11 pm to come in and do
it for him. The picture of wild horses churning through the surf on a
masonite board above the mantle piece in all their eye spiking streaks
of thick paint, had a tag proclaiming, "Genuine Oil Painting".
It is not at all surprising to me that Normie would fall for the
'Dutchessing' and fawning of some very clever people who presided over a
multi million dollar industry. An industry Normie and the builders
labourers could, and did cost dearly in lost profits.
To the best of his ability he was a good friend to the builders
labourers and presided over their elevation from the unseen flotsam of
the building industry to men and women who, for a period, commmanded
more respect than they ever knew before or since.
Under the leadership of Norm Gallagher, builders labourers gained
payment for public holidays, sick leave, high wages, supperanuation,
severance pay, decent site amenities, safe working environments where
none had previously existed and other benefits too numerous to mention.
He was absolutely hated by the establishment and eventually trapped and
ruined.Let there be no mistake, he was not the target, the builders
labourers were for daring to exceed their appointed station at the
bottom of society's barrel. For a while, the labourers had a special
place in the sun, though like all upstarts they were evenetually put in
their place. As is usually the case, the distortion of the class bubble
led to an unholy alliance of forces determined to put the lid back on. I
the end no ammount of money was spared to destroy the BLF and no tactics
were too dirty for the employers, the state and some of their union
allies.
The quarrel that I and some others had with Gallagher was the perception
that in the end when the trap was sprung, he put himself first. He had
come to believe that he and the BLF were synonimous. Becaues he dug in
so deeply the press had a field day and the builders labourers were
vilified in every paper in the land, almost on a daily basis. A lot of
the pride in being a BL was sucked away and it became almost tantamount
to admitting to mob membership to say socially one was a BL.
Norm Gallagher had lots of failings, like the rest of us. Only the rest
of us are not generally so far under the microscope in everything we do.
Gallagher has to be seen in the context of his time, in the struggle
against the absorption of Australia into the world economy, the cold war
and the deep seated splits in the left based largely on foreign
interpretations of ideology.
I choose to remember his best qualities which stack up well against the
characters of the puny leaders of the working class who have led us to
such powerlessness. He did some trully nasty things to me for my
opposition to his excesses yet I choose to remember a battler from the
wrong side of the tracks who got out of his depth in a shark pool.
Normie thought that I was an 'intellectual' - a severe criticism in the
age of the so called cultural revolution, while at the same time he
could cheerfully tell the press that when he died he wanted to go to the
same place as Stalin. As shocking as that may strike some people I
always thought its major significance was that he said it in an
interview with 'Playboy'.
Vale Norm Gallagher
Peter O'Dea
FormerBranch Sectretary
ABCE & BLF
ACT.
--
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