Paddy Crumlin

Padraig (Paddy) Crumlin was born and raised in Riverwood in Sydney. His father, Joe, was a self-funded Master Mariner, who went to sea as a deck boy on the Australian coast in 1947; Joe was also an active trade unionist who was on the Executive Board of the Merchant Service Guild (MSG). Paddy attended De La Salle College Kingsgrove and DeLa Salle Bankstown on a Commonwealth scholarship.

Australian National Maritime Museum

In August 2023 The Albanese Labor Government announced the appointment of Paddy Crumlin as a part-time member of the Australian National Maritime Museum Council, for a three-year term.

MUA leadership, 2023

• Paddy Crumlin, National Secretary
• Warren Smith, Deputy National Secretary
• Adrian Evans, Assistant National Secretary
• Thomas Mayo, Assistant National Secretary
• Jamie Newlyn, Assistant National Secretary
• Mich-Elle Myers, Assistant National Secretary

"Making Change Happen"

"Making Change Happen" is a collection of 45 interviews by Kevin Cook with black and white campaigners about how people get ideas and make them happen. Kevin Cook, nicknamed “Cookie”, couldn’t be there due to his state of health.

A ceremony orchestrated by Barbara Flick, an Aboriginal campaigner, paid tribute to Cookie’s life.

Several people delivered speeches. Among them, Linda Burney, Deputy Leader of the NSW Opposition and Indigenous Activist, and Paddy Crumlin, National Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and President, International Transport Workers Federation.

At the end of the ceremony, Heather Goodall was very moved and concluded her speech by saying: “Cookie is the hero of my children, the hero of our children, the hero of the future.”

"Maritime Men of the South Pacific" launch

According to SEARCH Foundation member Chris Haviland, Melbourne's New International Bookshop and SEARCH Foundation held a book launch for "Maritime Men of the South Pacific" November 22, 2022.

Speakers were Diane Kirkby, Author; Rae Frances, President of ASSLH ( the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History) and Paddy Crumlin, MUA National Sec. and ITF President.

Authors Diane Kirkby is a Professor of Law and Humanities, University of Technology Sydney and Research Professor (Emeritus) at La Trobe University, Lee-Ann Monk is an Adjunct Research Fellow in History at La Trobe University, Dmytro Ostapenko is Research Associate at La Trobe University.

SEARCH member

Paddy Crumlin is reportedly a member of the SEARCH Foundation.

SEARCH Foundation

Cuban Ambassador

14 June, 2023. The Cuban Ambassador to Australia exchanged with Paddy Crumlin, current President of the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) and General Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia at the headquarters on this capital.

During the exchange Crumlin extended warm greetings to the Cuban trade union representatives and reaffirmed the support of the Australian trade union organization for the Cuban people, in particular its rejection of the blockade that Cuba has unjustly suffered for more than six decades.

On her part, the Cuban Ambassador thanked the trade union leader for his position, the expressions of solidarity and support, and reciprocated the greeting on behalf of the Cuban trade union representatives.

Cuban Ambassador Monzon

October 15, 2012 Cuban Ambassador Pedro Monzon addresses MUA National Council On The Topic Of Cuban Solidarity.

Crumlin in Cuba

CPA/MUSAA

Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) members may have had a chance to read the April 2003 edition of the Sea and Waterfront Voice. The edition marks the 20th anniversary of the Maritime Unions Socialist Activities Association (MUSAA).

A glance through the Voice's pages will reveal a number of familiar names. MUA national secretary Paddy Crumlin, national assistant secretary Mick Doleman and numerous other MUA officials from various branches have all contributed articles.

The overlap between MUA officials and MUSAA members is considerable. Crumlin is the national secretary of MUSAA. MUA Central NSW (Sydney) branch secretary Robert Coombs is a local MUSAA leader. Around half of all MUA officials are also MUSAA members.

MUSAA traces its origins back to the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Up until the 1950s, the CPA had blindly followed the policy dictates of USSR leader Joseph Stalin.

This time, the CPA came out in opposition to the Soviet invasion. This marked the beginning of its shift away from blind allegiance to the twists and turns of Soviet foreign policy. However, CPA leaders responded to the negative experience of Stalinism by abandoning Marxist ideas and shifting rightward towards the Labor Party.

The CPA membership became polarised between the majority who denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the minority who supported it.

Those who defended the use of Soviet tanks eventually split from the CPA and formed the pro-Moscow Socialist Party of Australia (SPA) in 1971.

The SPA was to suffer its own split a decade later.

In 1983, Prime Minister Bob Hawke's newly elected Labor government introduced the Prices and Incomes Accord, with the support of trade union officials from the CPA. The accord was an agreement between the federal government and the Australian Council of Trade Unions that limited unions engaging in industrial action for better wages and conditions, in return for promised increases to the "social wage".

The accord resulted in a sharp decrease in the real value of wages, a big increase in corporate profits and the weakening of delegate structures and union power.

The SPA and other left groups correctly opposed the accord as a tool for driving down workers' wages and living standards, while shackling unions.

A large group of SPA union officials, however, disagreed with the party's anti-accord position. They preferred to side with the Hawke government and ALP and CPA union officials in implementing the anti-worker accord.

A handful of these pro-accord officials were expelled from the SPA in 1983. A series of resignations from the SPA soon followed.

The split was mainly concentrated in NSW. The union officials who left the SPA included Pat Clancy, Bill Brown, Tom McDonald and Stan Sharkey from the Building Workers' Industrial Union (BWIU). Others were Pat Geraghty from the Seamen's Union of Australia (SUA), Tom Supple, Merv McFarlane and Wal Jennings from the Waterside Workers' Federation (WWF) and Don Henderson and John Garrett from the Firemen and Deckhands Union (FDU).

Numerous Maritime Unions Socialist Activities Association members also joined the avidly pro-Moscow and pro-accord Association for Communist Unity (ACU) that was formed by Clancy, Brown, McDonald and Sharkey in 1984.

With the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the original CPA and the ACU in the early 1990s, many MUSAA members joined the Labor Party.

The Socialist Party of Australia renamed itself the Communist Party of Australia in 1996. It appears to have forgiven the earlier sins of MUSAA. The CPA entered into an alliance with MUSAA in 1997, which still exists today.

Western Australian MUSAA Conference

The socialist countries have imposed a check on capitalism but since the break-up of the Soviet Union the capitalist system had "grown new legs". There were now no borders for international capitalism, said Mick Doleman, from the Sydney Branch of the Maritime Unions Socialist Activities Association (MUSAA).

Mick was giving the opening address to the Western Australian State Conference of the MUSAA.

The conference was held in Perth over the weekend of February 27-28 1999. It brought together a wide range of speakers who, among other things, were united by the fact that all (except Gerry Adams) had participated on the picket lines during the MUA dispute.

For two days a long agenda of visiting speakers addressed members.

The conference was also addressed by Tony Cooke Secretary WA Trades and Labour Council (T&LC); Keith Peckham President of the WA T&LC; Christina Gillgren, a State Executive member of the WA ALP; Ramona Mitussis, a trade union activist; Dr Rob Lambert, the convenor of the WA T&LC International Committee; Vinicio Molina from the Cuba Friendship Society; John Gandini Convenor Trade Union Support Group for East Timor; Terry Buck, Secretary MUA WA Branch; Dr Carmen Lawrence, MHR; Paddy Crumlin, National Secretary of MUSAA; Vic Williams, Secretary, Perth Branch of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA); and Peter Symon, CPA General Secretary.

CPA reminiscing

In November, 1995, at the the Tom Nelson Hall, the one time Sydney Branch office of the Waterside Workers' Federation, 100 people gathered at a dinner to celebrate the Communist Party of Australia's foundation and honour maritime veterans of the party, a function organised by the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and various socialist groupings within that union. The speakers were all key people, past and present, in the maritime labour movement: Harry Black, John Coombs, Robert Coombs, Paddy Crumlin, Jim Donovan, Pat Geraghty, Don Henderson, Taff Sweetensen.

"STATEMENT REGARDING ABORIGINAL LAND RIGHTS"

In April 1986 several hundred attendees of The Broad Left Conference in Melbourne signed an add in the National Times "STATEMENT REGARDING ABORIGINAL LAND RIGHTS".

Signatories included Paddy Crumlin.

Bulgaria

In the mid-1980s, Crumlin travelled on a left-wing union delegation to Bulgaria, which was then in economic disarray. After exchanging his cash into Bulgarian levs, he went to the shops to get a feed - only to discover there was barely any food available. The shelves were, however, stacked with cleaning products and alcohol.

"When I returned home, my father picked me up from the airport," Crumlin, 57, recalls. "He asked me how it turned out and I said, 'My experience of the communist world is that I've never been so clean or so drunk in my life."

Carr connection

Paddy Crumlin on Mick Carr Queensland Branch News of Maritime Unions of Australia:

National Secretary, Paddy Crumlin was a comrade and contemporary of Mick over half a century. He recalled the political fervour of their youth and their lifelong fight for justice and human decency – not just for maritime workers, but other working men and women in Australian and internationally.

“We all came from the same generation of young communists and socialist activists, right in the middle of the worst threat human society has ever seen, the Cold War and the arms race,” he said.

“Mick made a tremendous contribution to the Union over the years,” said Maritime Union National Secretary Paddy Crumlin. “He led the union delegation to Moscow for the World Youth Conference and helped raise $100,000 for the Cuban children's hospital in Havana.”

Missed out on Moscow

In 1985 Paddy Crumlin sought election to become a delegate to that year's WFDY Festival in Moscow. Mick Carr was successful and went on to lead the delegation.