A Tough Place to Work - Wharfies and Lumpers
Hard work, and not much of it - bale hook, by the strength of thine back
From the earliest times until comparatively recently the cargoes of merchant ships were handled by people known variously as lumpers, dockers, wharfies, stevedores, and longshoremen. Goods from the finest porcelain to coal were manually loaded and unloaded ships with only the most basic equipment. Until the unions were able to negotiate better working conditions, lumpers had to load goods in all weathers. Nowadays, in Australia, containerisation has changed all that. The population of waterside workers in Fremantle has shrunk from several thousand, mostly untrained manual labourers, to a few hundred specialised crane and vehicle operators.
The Fremantle Lumpers Union was active 1889-1946, then it became part of the Waterside Workers Federation. In 1993 that merged into the Maritime Union of Australia. Notable among the union’s organisers was Paddy Troy who worked for decades to improve the pay and working conditions of Fremantle’s lumpers. A member of the Communist Party, he was frequently investigated by police and ASIO, but he was always held in high regard in Fremantle where a pilot boat and shopping mall were named after him. Sadly, lumper Tom Edwards became a working-class martyr when he died after being injured on Bloody Sunday, 4 May 1919. Part of a group of unionists protesting about unfair labour practices, Tom was struck on the head and died three days later in Fremantle Hospital. A memorial to him stands in Walyalup Koort, formally King’s Square.
Tom Edwards' funeral procession, Fremantle, 1919.
Credit: State Library of Western Australia, Izzy Orloff collection BA1059/1556-1562