seamen in major ports throughout Australia in March showed that Australian seamen are overwhelmingly solid with the crews of the Boonaroo and the Jeparit, who refused to carry bombs and other war supplies for use by Australian forces in Vietnam. As a result of the crews' action, the two ships have been taken to Vietnam with crews supplied by the Royal Australian Navy.
Messages of congratulation have come from ships at sea and ports in New Guinea, Fiji and New Zealand. Seamen in Wellington said: "We warmly congratulate our Australian brothers on their dignified and principled stand." The Vietnamese National Front for Liberation has also sent a message of solidarity and thanks to the seamen.
At the meetings around the coast, involving hundreds of seamen, only eleven men in all voted against the union's stand. But this overwhelming solidarity contrasts quite starkly with the actions of Albert Monk and the other leaders of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and the stand taken on Vietnam by Edward Gough Whitlam QC, the newly elected leader of the Labor party. Despite the fact that the seamen's stand was in line with the ACTU's policy against the war, the ACTU leadership openly supported the government in the Boonaroo and Jeparit disputes. When ACTU President Monk's efforts to get the ships sailing with civilian crews had failed, the government commissioned the ships and put navy crews aboard. Meanwhile, in the Labor party, Whitlam has moved to reverse the policy of opposition to the war. His new policy is: it was wrong to send troops to Vietnam but now that they are there we can't withdraw them. In addition, he stands for a greater share for Australian business in defence contracts.
Victorian secretary of the Seamen's Union, Bert Nolan, told the Communist paper Tribune: “The whole affair was an obvious attempt by the Federal Government to ‘set the Union up.' Why couldn't they have used the naval supply vessel Sydney, which has been running to Vietnam ever since Australia became involved there? Sydney is lying idle in Sydney Harbour at this moment." That this was a deliberate government provocation of the Seamen's Union, designed to provide an excuse for the government to make an open attempt to smash the union, is quite consistent with the way the government feels and behaves on the Vietnam issue. With its whole foreign policy designed to keep the Americans in Asia; so that it is categorically opposed to negotiations -- even Johnson's policy on negotiations -- as well as American bombing pauses, it would be reasonable to suppose that the government wants to tighten things up at home.
In south Vietnam, Australian crews have been well received by the Australian troops. On the Jeparit's last trip, the army ordered that the troops guarding the ship were not to be given food or beer by the crew. The crew replied to this by deciding to share their own rations with the guards. This brought the army to reverse its policy. Later one of the army guards for the ship told a crew member: "Not many were in a great hurry to volunteer for guard duty the first day. But next day, when the first lot of guards told us how they had been treated, everyone wanted to volunteer." And now, hanging in the recreation room of the Jeparit is an oil painting of Vietnamese fishing boats on which is engraved: "To the Seamen's Union of Australia, MV Jeparit, Australian Logistic Group, Vietnam." This is hardly a welcome state of affairs for the government.
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