Electric Eric, by Dr Jillian Koshin (Bokprint 2009)
When Tim Bok first asked me if I’d launch this book, I had doubts as to whether I was the most suitable person, doubts, in fact, as to whether I was at all appropriate for the task. Eric
Reece was, within a few days, the same age as my father (and, incidentally, of that other famous and very different Tasmanian, Errol Flynn. 1909 was an interesting vintage.) But I never sawhim as any kind of father figure.
For most of the time that I had anything to do with Eric we were on opposite sides of whatever debates were going on within the Australian Labor Party in the 1970s. But then, many other
Tasmanian ALP members of my generation were in constant, or at least frequent, conflict with Eric, including some who have gone on to lengthy and fruitful political careers and who might be considered better suited to launch this book than I, who dropped out of the ALP 30 years ago. Then, of course there are those who were a lot closer to Eric and who might be seen as even more appropriate.
But I accepted the gig, and I’m glad I did because reading this book has given me insights not just into Eric Reece the man, the union organiser, the politician, the Premier, but into the history of this island that I love so passionately and that I felt at times I had to defend against what Eric Reece stood for.
I do rate a tiny mention in the book, thanks to a certain incident here in Launceston in 1973 which Dr Koshin has treated very kindly. Interestingly, I also occupy a sort of negative space.
I shall read a short passage from page 314, but before I do I remind you of one thing. Anyonewho knows anything about the ALP knows the importance of numbers. As Senator Pat
Kennelly (who gets, deservedly, many more mentions in the book than I do despite being aVictorian) once famously remarked , “You can have the l-l-l-logic, brother, give me the n-n-nnumbers any time.”
Just concentrate on the numbers as I read this piece: “By the end of June [1973], a majority of the state executive, including Reece, Everett, Neilson and Harradine, voted to charge seven members with disloyalty. Dell was expelled. Four others — John White, John Green, Rana Roy and D. Smith — were suspended and party junior vice president, Richard Mulcahy, resigned.”
Seven members… As I said, I occupy a negative space.
But enough about me. Electric Eric Elliot Reece. There really should be a fourth ‘E’ there, standing for Enigma. For he was an enigmatic character, a man of deep contradictions. Having
read this book I can see why that is the case. Eric Reece came to union and political work with a lot of passion but very little theoretical grounding. It was from direct experience and an
instinctive grasp of the importance of solidarity that he understood both the plight of unskilled and semi-skilled workers on the West Coast and elsewhere and the tactics whereby he could help bring about improvements for them. He was under no illusions about the interests of employers or about the means they would use to further those interests, but when it came toaction, as Dr Koshin points out time and again, it was his tactical skill, his hard work and his ability to inspire support from workers that enabled him to succeed in getting a better deal.
It was only when he achieved positions of power within the ALP and within government that these proved not to be enough and his lack of a sound theoretical basis for his actions was exposed. For example, he was prepared to turn a blind eye to employment practices that were contrary to union principles during the late forties when the Agricultural Bank, despite union opposition, employed workers on piece rates. The ideal he had grown up with and fostered, of the individual sacrificing for the greater good of the many, might have provided the rationale for this, but the fact that he, rather than invoke this principle publicly, referred the matter to Cabinet, knowing they would do nothing, shows that he was, in fact, uneasy with the potential political fallout from being seen to impose his ideals from the height of a ministerial post on those who were being exploited.
One of the chief virtues that Eric prided himself on and demanded of others was loyalty. Dr Koshin recounts some incidents where Eric’s application of that virtue in practice seemed
selective. When Robert Cosgrove in 1951 went against party policy and advocated support for Menzies’ referendum on banning the Communist Party, the State Executive, with Eric as
President, refused to call him to account. When Bill Morrow, at the following State Conference, moved to censure those who had displayed disloyalty to the Party in this matter, he had his
nomination for a place on the Senate ticket knocked back by the State Executive, again under Eric’s leadership, on the grounds that by bringing the matter up he had attempted to cause
disaffection within the Party. It was more important to give to the outside world, to the voters, the appearance of harmony than to actually encourage members to stick together on agreed
policy.
Certainly the lack of a firm philosophical base can be seen in his vacillating attitudes towards the National Civic Council and its earlier manifestation, the Industrial Groups. Dr Koshin
writes persuasively of Eric’s role as an “Evatt man” at the time of the split, but she also lists a number of occasions in later decades when Eric and Brian Harradine were part of a united front against those of us in the Party who wanted the ALP to demonstrate commitment to its socialist heritage, to a vigorous opposition to the Vietnam War and conscription, to the concept of sustainability in relation to the impact of development on the physical environment, to a fair go for gays, to women’s control over their own fertility, to intelligent drug laws and to a range of similar progressive social policies.
A fundamental value within the ALP has always been democracy. Eric Reece fought long and hard to have the principle of full and equal adult suffrage for Legislative Council and local
government elections applied. Yet within the Parliamentary Party it was often a different story. He could be quite the authoritarian “strong leader” if he considered that style of leadership
necessary. He was possibly the only Tasmanian ALP Premier never to have been elected to the PLP leadership by caucus. On Cosgrove’s resignation, he simply informed the Governor that he could form a government, called a caucus meeting to choose a ministry and got straight down to business. Of course his enormous personal popularity made such niceties as democratic procedures seem trivial and blurred the line between his own will, that of the Party and that of the people.
In the light of present day political concerns, the overwhelming issue of Eric Reece’s political career, and one which this book treats in some considerable detail, is the conflict between
development and conservation. I believe that it was in this area that Eric’s lack of a considered and consistent political philosophy, of a theoretical analysis that could underpin his decisions, created problems. He was, for better and for worse, a pragmatist. In what he achieved for Tasmania’s industrial and social development, in education, housing, working conditions, public health and a whole lot more areas, the attitudes he displayed in his days as an AWU organiser in one of the most isolated and difficult parts of the whole world, served him well. When it came to handing over our forests to international woodchipping companies for a pittance, to turning a goodly slice of the Mount Field National Park over to ANM to make newsprint, and, of course, to the flooding of Lake Pedder, we can justifiably say that we wish he’d had not just more foresight, more of a 21st century-type sensibility, but more of an understanding of how the intertwined economic and political systems work at a level deeper than the level of party rooms, conferences and negotiations.
Skill—quite remarkable skill—hard work and the ability to inspire others got Eric Reece, and with him the whole Tasmanian community, out of a depressed and desperate situation and into relative prosperity. In the end, however, they were not enough.
If this book only gave us the story of one of the most influential Tasmanians ever it would be worth reading. But it gives us so much more even than that. It gives us a sense of the utter
fragility of our society as recently as less than a century ago, and it outlines a collective effort to overcome that fragility, an effort shaped very decisively by the Australian Labor Party and its affiliated Trade Unions.
This story is an ongoing one, and one for which a happy ending is far from assured. The paradoxes that Eric Reece embodied are at the heart of the question about our future. We should be extremely grateful to Dr Jillian Koshin for pointing them out and for illustrating them by reference to such a colossus of our history as Eric Reece.
I congratulate her on her achievement, I congratulate Bokprint on publishing the book and producing, as they always do, such a fine looking volume, and I commend Electric Eric to you all.
Tim Thorne
Launceston
20/11/09
