Togs's Place.Com.: John Cummins and the fight for the right to organise by Joe Loh

Saturday, October 08, 2011

John Cummins and the fight for the right to organise by Joe Loh

The events depicted in this footage relate to a particular period of history when the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) was deregistered in 1986. (Click underline to film)

The Union was fighting for its survival and John Cummins was arrested and jailed countless times as he fought for the right to represent BLF members.

In one particular court appearance when John was challenging an injunction imposed by the Victorian Supreme court preventing him from entering construction sites, he defiantly stated to the Judge:
“I reserve the right – as any self respecting union official would – to service my members. In fact, any trade union official worth their salt must reserve that right. It’s a right that is upheld by the United Nations and international covenants to which Australia is a party and signatory. It can’t be denied I have members. I reserve the right to discharge my duty”.

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John/Togs Tognolini

All my views expressed here are my own. I’m 65. Before I became a teacher in 2000. I worked in a variety of blue collar jobs since 1975 as a labourer including working for two years in General Motors Holden’s Melbourne car plants at Fisherman’s Bend and Dandenong. I've also been a scaffolder, rigger, dogman, railway fettler (track worker) on Sydney's railways, and a ship's painter and docker at Sydney's Cockatoo Island Dockyard. I've been a life long Unionist and Socialist since I was 16. I'm a proud and active member of the New South Wales Teachers Federation Union/Australian Education Union. I'm a historian, geographer, teacher, writer, actor, musician & poet. I’ve decided to reactivate my blog named after the house built by my Swiss/Italian grandfather/nonno Antonio Tognolini from Tirano, Sondria, Lombardia, Italy. He came to Australia as a passenger on the ‘Northumberland’ when it docked in Naarm/Melbourne in1874. Antonio built it with my Uncle Henry Phillips and it was called Togs’s Place, they finished building it in 1906, in Yandoit, Central Victoria, in Dja Dja Wurrung Country. It served as Cobb & Co way-station, which was immediately adjacent to the main coach route from Yandoit to Castlemaine. It delivered mail to the mainly American Gold Miners of American Gully. It’s where my father Vic was born in 1910, the youngest of 15 children between Antonio and my grandmother Annie Phillips. Annie was single mother with her one son Henry Phillips, when her and Antonio got together. Annie was the granddaughter of an English Convict from Hampshire,Thomas Batt who landed in Hobart/Nipaluna in 1830 and Irish Woman Mary McCarthy, from Cork,who arrived in the 1830’s to Hobart. Her mother was Catherine Batt who married an English Convict from Norfolk William Phillips. I've produced four radio documentaries for the ABC's Radio National/RN: Bush Fires, Ups and Downs of Scaffolding, The Last Ship Built in the Dockyard, the HMAS Success built in Sydney’s Cockatoo Island Dockyard, the navy gave a me a sea ride on it from Hobart to Sydney. Underground about Lithgow Mine Rescue in New South Wales's Western Coal fields. I've made the films The Occupation of Cockatoo Island Dockyard 1989. I made this film with Frances Kelly. As well as my film The Deregistration of the Builders Labourers Federation-the Victorian Story 1986-1992. They were both disputes I was directly involved in and these films are on Youtube. I've also been involved in community radio since 1987 and worked as a journalist for the ABC Radio’s Double J and later Triple J. I have a First Class Honours Degree in Communications from the University of Technology, Sydney where I also majored in Journalism and Social and Political Theory and a Diploma of Secondary Education from the University of Western Sydney. I've also been a Marker for the NSW Higher School Certificate’s Ancient History Examination, three times. I've been a high school teacher for over twenty-four years. I completed the TAFE Certificate in Fire Fighting Operations and was a volunteer bush fire fighter for seventeen years and retired from this after I joined the Zipper Club when I had a mechanical heart valve inserted in 2011. I'm originally from Naarm/Melbourne’s Brunswick, Wurundjeri Country and lived in Sydney on Gadigal and Darug Lands and the Central Coast on Darkinjung Country at Long Jetty & Umina Beach before moving back to Sydney and then to the Blue Mountain’s town of Katoomba on Darug and Gundungurra Lands in 1992 and was there for sixteen years before moving to Wellington Wiradjuri Country in Central West, New South Wales near Dubbo in 2008. The Mountain City Murders, my first book was published by Adelaide’s Ginninderra Press in 2010. My autobiographical account of heart disease Singing Johnny Cash in Cardiac Ward, A Personal Story of Heart Disease and Music was published in 2013. My first historical novel Brothers Part One: Gallipoli 1915 was published in 2014. I'm updating this book and my 2015 book A History Man’s Past & Other People’s Stories: A Shared Memoir. Part One: Other People’s Wars is a shared history in many ways. It’s where part of my story reflects the people I’ve interviewed with my media work over thirty five years. My interview with retired Australian SAS Warrant Officer Dr Brian Day, who served with the US Special Forces in Vietnam and Cambodia. He was also a founding member of the Australian Vietnam Veterans Association. I interviewed him in 1992 on Anzac, Racism, and the Madness of the Vietnam War. My interview with Stan Goff, a retired US Army Special Forces Master Sergeant and Vietnam Veteran who served in the US Army up until Haiti in 1996. He became involved in Military Families Against War that was formed when George W.Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. My question to Veteran Journalist, Writer and Filmmaker John Pilger, at a public meeting in Katoomba's Gearins Hotel, in the Blue Mountains about history being memory in 2008. My question to Activist, Academic, Writer and Linguist Noam Chomsky, and coverage of his Sydney Press Conference, when he visited Australia in 1995, campaigning for an independent East Timor, then under the murderous Indonesian Occupation. A shared history in another way too, I argue here that Australia’s Frontier Wars against our Indigenous Peoples should be recognised in the Australian War Memorial. I also argued against former prime minister Tony Abbott’s $90 million dollar John Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux, France and highlight the $400 million spent on the Centenary of Australia’s involvement in World War One as a major act of hypocrisy, when one in ten of our nation’s homeless are War Veterans. I'm updating this book in light of the AUKUS Alliance and Nuclear Submarine purchase. Prime minister Anthony Albanese has signed away Australian Sovereignty to be part of the United States containment of China. This book is an attempt to answer that big question, why has Australia been at War so much in so many places normally as junior partner to Britain or the United States? I'm currently completing the Brothers historical novel series with the following three parts concentrating on the Western Front in France and Belgium from 1916 to 1918. In late April 2016, I moved back to Katoomba and I'm on the New South Wales Teachers Federation’s State Council for the Blue Mountains and secretary of the Blue Mountains Teachers Association. In 2018 I endured a stroke that nearly killed me. After recovering I decided to take a break from writing for five and half years. On May 11th 2023, I was awarded Life Membership of the Mighty NSW Teachers Federation by then NSWTF Senior President Angelo Gavrielatos.

Navigating Togs's Place.Com

I will be posting a lot of my own work here but also articles, interviews and Youtube broadcasts from people that I like and respect. I was doing this when I first set up Togs's Place.Com back in 2006. I stopped using this blog when I went out Bush to Wellington in 2008. This is a massive blog/web site. To get around and find articles you want or just explore, use the SEARCH BLOG, if you enter Noam Chomsky, you'll not only come up with numerous articles, speeches, interviews by and with Chomsky, but also being referred to in articles by Robert Fisk, John Pilger, Naomi Kline and myself. With Blogger you've got to scroll down from the most recent till the oldest. Every posting has a label. These numbers go backwards to when I started this site in October 2006. For example, with me reactivating this site I have started COVID19 2022 for easy reference to posting on this topic. I will start a new folder when it becomes full, with new label COVID19 2022 B with the date that this folder starts. I will be putting up new topics such as health issues in relation to strokes and heart disease, learning languages such as French that I’ve been doing now for the last three years, acting, writing, Australian Football, reviews of films, plays and books, as well my acting projects of William Shakespeare’s monologues. This blog has been a learning experience for me and operating and with reactivating it. I will try to help satisfy the insatiable hunger for alternative news and opinion on a range of issues in Australia that is often ignored or sidelined by the corporate media and an increasing self censored and Murdoch managed ABC. In this time of COVID19, the Climate Change Emergency, Social and Racial Injustice, privatisation and attacks on Workers’ Rights, it is needed more than ever. I've added Google translation is here in Arabic, Bulgarian, Croation, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Spanish, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Norwegian, Korean, Chinese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish and Greek. Cheers John/Togs Tognolini 5-2-2022

Journalists and Writers I Like.

"Bread and work and love, the poor man’s trinity, and by all three needs they chain him down." Christina Stead 1902-1983 Seven Poor Men of Sydney
"Every government is run by liars and nothing should be believed." I.F.Stone 1907-89
"I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult." Arthur Miler 1915-2005
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." George Orwell 1903-50
"It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understandig the hidden agendas of the message that surrounds it." John Pilger
"Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war - for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more." Joesph Heller 1923-99
"Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism." Graham Greene 1904-91
"My experience in the First World War and now the Second World War [his son Barney was killed in the Battle of Singapore] changed my outlook on things. It is hard to believe that there is a God. I feel the Bible is a book written by man but for the purpose of preying on a person’s conscience, and to confuse him. Anyone who taken part in a bayonet charge (and I have) [Gallipoli], and has managed to retain his proper senses, must doubt the truth of the Bible and the powers of God, if one exists. And considering the many hundreds of different religions that there are in this world of ours, and the fact that many religions have caused terrible wars and hatreds throughout the world, and that many religions that have hoarded tremendous wealth and property while people inside and outside religion are starving , it is difficult to remain a believer. No Sir, there is no God, it is only a myth." Albert Facey 1894-1982 A Fortunate Life
"Now take my case. I’m twenty-nine and have two brothers—one in the Liberal Party and one serving six years for rape and arson. My sister Peg is on the streets and Dad lives off her earnings. Mum is pregnant by the boarder and because of this Dad won’t marry her. Last night I got engaged to an ex-prostitute and I wish to be fair to her: should I tell her about my brother in the Liberal Party." David Ireland 1927- The Unknown Industrial Prisoner
"The first law of journalism-to confirm existing prejudice rather than contradict it." Alexander Cockburn
"The Labour Party [ALP], starting with a band of inspired Socialists, degenerated into a vast machine for capturing political power, but did not know how to use the power when attained except for the profit of individuals[...] Such is the history of all Labour organisations in Australia, and not because they are Australian , but because they are Labour..." Victor Gordon Childe 1892-1957, How Labour Governs
"The trouble with a free market economy is that it requires so many policemen to make it work." Neal Ascherson, 1932- Games with the Shadows, Policing the Marketplace.
"The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. " Major General Smedley Butler,1881-1940
"What is the crime of robbing a bank compared with the crime of founding one." Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956
"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?" Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007
“I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.” Arundhati Roy
[Battler]" a conscientious person working against many odds to make a living; one whose life is a constant struggle.’ Battlers maybe men or women; black or white. They rarely deal with racism (the negative side of our tradition) because they sympathise with anyone facing adversity or unfair criticism. The term ‘battler’ is a state of mind-a traditional attitude which goes back to the convict era, when the battler was on a flogging to nothing but fiddled around the rules and held his masters in contempt. The battlers are aware that they are being lied to by....politicians; and they suspect that Keating’s warning that Australia could become a banana republic is in fact, happening before their eyes." Frank Hardy 1917-1994. Retreat Australia Fair 1990
I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer. Brendan Behan 1923-64

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Saturday, October 08, 2011

John Cummins and the fight for the right to organise by Joe Loh

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