Interview conducted by Lesley Dormer for Workers Weekly, Radio 5UV, University of Adelaide. (Produced by Ray Broomhill.)

Introduction - Don Sutherland

This interview was run about 12 months into the Hawke Labor government’s operation of “The Statement of Accord by the ALP and the ACTU regarding Economic Policy” (The Accord), created in February 1983.

Interviewer, Lesley Dormer, enables Laurie to explain what had been achieved in the first 12 months, outline the character of the Accord from his point of view as a medium for “higher intervention” by workers, and why that was necessary. He starts by emphasizing a point about strategy: that in that first year the Liberals’ monetarism had been rejected.

Carmichael also outlines the problems and obstacles that have not been overcome and introduces the crucial question of the relationship between the industrial wage and the social wage in defining living standards.

Presciently, he describes the potential of the finance system to be a defining "nuisance" in the efforts to get the full value out of the Accord strategy.

His discussion on the industrial wage raises vital questions; for example, “militant” unionism can, in a particular form, promote a wages struggle that aligns with the free-market approach of the employers. Thus, here in 1984, he suggests “enterprise bargaining” is in that framework.

The interview concludes with a brief discussion that links his approach to the Accord to earlier views he had expressed about an open-ended transition to socialism.

Also CLICK HERE.

Speech delivered to Second Australian Political Economy Conference, Sydney, 1977

This speech was also published not long after its delivery by Laurie's union, The Amalgamated Metalworkers and Shipwrights Union. Among other things, the speech provides insights into Carmichael’s approach to leadership and strategy, especially the concepts “open-ended transition” and “workers Intervention”. His focus is on “the big picture” aligns with his approach to building workers power from below (see “Role of Shop Stewards Councils”).

Click here to read.

Commentary

Anecdotally, this speech was delivered to an audience of a few hundred.

It is one of the most important documents in Australia’s labour movement history. This speech helps us to understand Carmichael’s approach to union leadership and strategy applied to the big picture. The application of strategy to the workplace level is sketched out in his “Role of Shop Stewards Councils”. (Click here.) Carmichael’s grasp of the difference between program and strategy, and their dynamic relationship, is far stronger than is apparent in contemporary practice.

He sets out the characteristics of a distinctive Australian approach to generating democratic change for democratic socialism.

He introduces two key concepts that recur in campaigns and associated articles and speeches in the years that follow. These are “open-ended transition” and “workers intervention”.

“Workers Intervention” is Carmichael’s adaptation and development of “workers control”. Remember, this speech is made towards the end of the heyday of the NSW Builders’ Labourers' green bans struggles that were also an industry-wide expression of workers’ control. In part, Carmichael was looking toward how workers’ power might challenge and re-direct manufacturing industry development.

Carmichael was mounting a critique of mainstream unionism that fought reasonably well on the wages front but lacked or was opposed to a union role in the decision-making about jobs creation.

The speech starts with a description of the crisis that faced workers and their unions at that time. Strategy starts with an analysis of the situation, and that includes the dominant alternatives expressed as “Friedmanite” and “traditional Keynesian” (which are quickly rejected).

From there Carmichael works through the 4 main options that lie in front of the union movement, either as established practice or as an emerging possibility. A “transitional program” approach is an emerging possibility at that time.

Therefore, he lays out what that is, and what it is not. The key phrase is “open-ended”. One of the big issues in this approach is “compromise” and therefore there is an elaboration of what a “principled” approach to compromise requires.

Notably, a transitional program is NOT “a formula for a ‘social contract’ for the purposes of refurbishing capitalism at the expense of the working class”.

There follows a point-by-point summary of the specific features of “Australian circumstances” that justify the “open-ended transitional program” that he is promoting. Worth reading, if only to assess each point against the march of history since 1977.

Carmichael then describes the primary and secondary forces available to propagate the strategy.

And, moving to the end of his speech, crucially, he outlines the “Four Cornerstones” for the content of the transitional program. The first of these is “Democratic Public Ownership”, followed by “Democratic Control”, “Social Objectives of Production”, and “A New World Economic Order”.

Each of these is treated relatively briefly. Each is discussed in greater detail in other speeches, articles, interviews and pamphlets that followed in the years after, often adapting the detail to take account of circumstances. These appear as separate items in this collection.

Carmichael’s closing remarks focus on what he calls “Self-Action”. This requires deeper study by workers, their unions, and their allies. For example, earlier he had referred to “a growing reaction of the people against environmental destruction”, and then shortly after, in advocating “full employment” as an essential part of a transitional program: “… production is for social use, that it is for environmental protection and renewal.” This is 1977.

What he says about “Self-Action” is of serious significance for the proponents of a “just transition” out of the fossil fuel society to renewables; the profound difference between a “just transition” and a democratic just transition.

- Don Sutherland (June 2021)

Laurie Carmichael was a prominent Australian working class and trade union leader throughout the second half of the twentieth century. He was born in Coburg, (Melbourne, Victoria) 1925, and died on August 18th, 2018. (Click here for more.) 

It is possible to locate Laurie Carmichael's participation in the Australian working-class movement over 5 primary periods: 

• his activity in the 1940s as a fitter and turner apprentice and political activist in the Eureka Youth League, Young Engineers, and Communist Party; 

• his role from 1948 as a shop steward representing fitters and turners and other metalworkers at the Williamstown Naval Dockyard in Melbourne, Victoria; 

• his role as an elected Melbourne District Secretary of the Amalgamated Engineer's Union, that included significant growth in union membership and active participation, building the strategy that defeated the anti-union laws of the fifties and sixties, putting into practice his belief that “peace is union business” in the great Vietnam Moratorium movement; 

• his contribution as the Assistant National Secretary of the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union, including building international solidarity in the International Metal Workers Federation, and in other roles; and 

• finally, his role as the Assistant Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. 

Throughout his decades of union and political activism, Carmichael was a prominent member of the Communist Party of Australia, acting as its National President from 1978-81. 

Carmichael started his union activism as an apprentice fitter and turner and continued as a shop steward and then the Convenor of the shop stewards' committee at the Williamstown Naval Dockyard. From there he was elected by the members of the union to be the Secretary of the Melbourne District of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, and later the Assistant National Secretary of the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union. At the end of his union years, he was the Assistant Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. During that time he led a major national government review of the Australian vocational education system.

Carmichael was the classic, self-taught working-class intellectual. He read very widely for pleasure, for the sake of learning, and to inform his practical activity. His reading ranged broadly from the Marxist classics, non-Marxist political and economic commentary, classical and modern history, technology and computerization, and classical music. 

From 1983 to 1993 the Australian Labor government operated a method of consultation with big business and Australian unions, commonly known as the Accord(s). Carmichael was a "linchpin" of the union team that represented workers in the consultations between the government, employers, and unions.

Memorial services were held to pay respects to his unique contribution to Australian life in Melbourne on September 6, 2018, and Sydney on October 10, 2018. 

The Melbourne memorial was chaired by Andrew Dettmer (current National President of the AMWU) and the speakers were: Laurie Carmichael Jr., Senator Doug Cameron, Bill Shorten M.P., Bill Kelty, Max Ogden, and Sally McManus. 

The Sydney memorial was chaired by Judy Mundey (former National President of the C.P.A.) and the speakers were: Andrew Dettmer, Laurie Carmichael Jr (by video), Marie Armstrong (Laurie’s former administrative secretary), Laurie himself by a 1997 video recording, Bruce Campbell (retired AMWU organizer and leading shop steward in the shorter hours campaign in the late 70’s and early 80’s), Tom McDonald (former National Secretary of the BWIU), and Sally McManus (current Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.) 

At both memorial services, Carmichael’s son Laurie Carmichael Jr, provided insights into his personal life and the broad range of his recreational interests. These included classical music, ice-skating, ballroom dancing, gardening, mechanical and electronic tinkering, and above all, reading. 

Laurie Carmichael Jr’s Sydney speech will be posted soon. He was the first of the speakers at the Melbourne Memorial and his tribute to his father can be listened to here.