Jul-Aug 2008

Life on the Waterfront: Tas Bull, an autobiography

"A fascinating insight into the people, the politics & the events that helped shape Tas Bull as an outstanding union leader & committed political activist" - Jennie George

Tasnor Ivan Bull is a living contradiction. A seafarer, a wharfie, a union official, a sometime Salvation Armis, a communist. But, overwhelmingly, the former federal secretary of the Waterside Workers' Federation is a man who has devoted his entire life to Australia's maritime industry.

Tas Bull, the Tasmanian boy of Norwegian stock who ran to sea at 14, who gained his education in the university of real life and, having witnessed the abject poverty and injustices, which marked the immediate post-war years, chose the political answers contained in communist philosophy.

Despite these days of university education, rationalist economics and a deregulated industrial relations environment, his views, developed over more than 50 years of hands-on experience, remain pertinent. They are far from anachronistic.

Bull can neatly explain the manner in which stevedoring employers actually have to shoulder responsibility for many of the practices now so bitterly criticised by the likes of Reith and Corrigan. He can explain the events that surrounded the transition to containerised cargo handling, the mistakes made by the employers and the premium they were eventually made to pay.

Why? Because he grew up on the waterfront, because he cut his teeth in the two unions that became today's Maritime Union of Australia.

As a seafarer, Bull was a member of the Seamen's Union of Australia. As a wharfie, he was a member and long serving official of the Waterside Workers ' Federation of Australia.

Bull has seen the ebb and flow of Australian politics, and if he recognises parallels between the late 1990s and the mid 1950, it is because he was there, knew the people, knew the issues and applied his fundamentally Left-wing judgment.

Bull was not just an Australian trade unionist. Over nearly five decades, he e became an international trade unionist with links to some of the most powerful trade union forums in Europe.

Life on the Waterfront: Tas Bull, an autobiography

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