Pat Clancy
Pat Clancy trade unionist, was born on 21 January 1919 at Redfern, Sydney. Pat was educated at St Peter’s De La Salle School, Surry Hills. He left at 14 and, after working in a boot pattern factory, began an apprenticeship in the printing industry, but it was terminated. He was then employed in a battery factory. He played Rugby League with the Balmain juniors in 1936 and had some success as an amateur boxer.
In 1937 Clancy contested a professional fight at Leichhardt that netted him 22s. 6d., which covered his fare to Port Kembla to take up an apprenticeship as a bricklayer with Australian Iron & Steel Ltd. He began to represent other apprentices in disputes with management. His political consciousness was raised in 1938-39 by the dispute over the export of pig-iron to Japan, and further in 1940 by the strike called by the Australasian Coal & Shale Employees’ Federation which led to the closing of the Port Kembla steel works and to his sacking. When the works reopened he returned to a job there.
Early in 1941 Clancy joined the United Operative Bricklayers’ Trade Society of New South Wales. After the bricklayers and carpenters amalgamated at State level in 1942, he was elected to the committee of the new organisation. In February 1943 he became secretary of the South Coast district council of the Building Workers Industrial Union of New South Wales. On 10 August 1940 Clancy had married Alma May Thomas, a machinist, at St Francis Xavier’s Catholic Church, Wollongong. He studied Marxism with the intention of converting Alma, whose family were committed socialists, to Catholicism. Instead he became a Marxist and in 1943 joined the Communist Party of Australia. Elected as a delegate to the South Coast branch of the Labor Council of New South Wales, he soon became a vice-president. He later served on the parent body in Sydney for many years until he moved to the federal sphere.
In 1944 Clancy was elected an organiser in the New South Wales branch of the BWIU, a paid position which necessitated a move to Sydney in January 1945. He settled with his family at Revesby. Known as the `boy organiser’ because of his youthfulness, he led the struggle for full daytime trade training for apprentices. In Sydney he met Tom McDonald, with whom he soon had close links through the union and the CPA. They also played Rugby League in a Eureka Youth League team. Through the Eureka League Clancy also organised sporting events for children.
A `craggy, bespectacled, soft-spoken, affable man’, Clancy became assistant secretary (1947) and secretary (1953) of the New South Wales branch of the BWIU, then acting federal secretary (1971), and federal secretary (1973) after the death of Frank Purse. At a time of intense rivalry between the building unions, he served (1970-73, 1975-79) as the building group’s representative on the executive of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, losing one election to Norm Gallagher of the Australian Building Construction Employees’ & Builders’ Labourers’ Federation. Under Clancy’s leadership the first national building trades construction award was processed through the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1975. This development was important not only in reflecting market rates in an award but also because its first renewal, in 1976, under the so-called Ludeke formula foreshadowed the process of award restructuring in the late 1980s. Permanent employment for building workers was also won under his leadership. He retired from the federal secretary’s position in 1985 and became the honorary chair of the union’s international department, developing fraternal relations with overseas unions—a continuation of his work through his representation of the union on the executive of the communist-aligned World Federation of Trade Unions. Since 1980 he had been completely blind, as a result of diabetes, but, through a combination of tenacity, prodigious memory, sharp intelligence and the assistance of other union staff, had continued to work effectively.
After returning to Sydney Clancy had been elected to the Sydney district committee of the CPA in 1947 and to the central (national) committee of the party in 1958. He had stood unsuccessfully as a Communist candidate for the Federal seat of Banks in 1954. He sat on the executive of the central committee at the time of the split in the CPA after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The party’s attitudes to industrial policy and its relationship with the trade unions had long been a source of conflict: he regarded his first obligation as being to the interests of union members. He resigned from the CPA in 1971. The Socialist Party of Australia was formed in December that year; although he was cautious initially he became president. The party was pro-Moscow in its outlook and he was fondly referred to as `Clansky’. Because of differences among members he was removed as president in 1983 and resigned from the party. In 1984 he formed the Association for Communist Unity in an attempt to reunify the communist Left.
The Soviet Union awarded him the Order of People’s Friendship in 1979 and the New South Wales Labor Council included him on its list of leading unionists in 1980. After suffering a heart attack, he died on 24 July 1987 at Bombay (Mumbai), India, on his way home from a peace conference in Mongolia.[1]
"A History of the Left in the Trade Union Movement
With Flo Cluff, Edna Ryan, Jack Cambourn, Pat Clancy, Sally Bowen, Joe Palmada, Joe Owens, Steve Cooper - contact Robyne Nash.
"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 Pat Clancy.
Broad Left Conference initiators
The original initiative for the The Broad Left Conference came from a group of 11 in Sydney who in August 1985 sent a letter asking over 300 people to publically sponsor the conference.
The 11 initiators were George Campbell, Pat Clancy, Peter Robson, Barbara Murphy, Meredith Burgmann, Brian Aarons, Ken McLeod, Ted Wheelwright and Nando Lelli.[2]
- He threw himself into helping initiate and organise the 1986 Broad Left Conference which attracted 1500 people from all over the country and contributed to the movement for socialist renewal.[3]
Draft Statement for the Broad Left Conference
The Broad Left Conference Draft Statement was written by George Campbell, Peter Robson, Barbara Murphy, Meredith Burgmann, Patrick Lee, Brian Aarons, Ken McLeod, Fay Campbell, Ted Wheelwright, Nando Lelli, Pat Clancy, and "endorsed by 300 plus sponsors from around the country."[4]
CPSU conference
The Broad Left Conference
The Communist Party of Australia, Association for Communist Unity and others organized The Broad Left Conference, which was held 1986 28th-31st March, at the NEW SOUTH WALES INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Broadway, Sydney.
Pat Clancy was among the list of sponsors.
Sydney Broad Left meeting
Humphrey McQueen, Laurie Carmichael, Kate McNeil, Mike Mansell, Tricia Caswell, George Campbell, Pat Clancy, Joyce Stevens, Di Zetlin, Jon Hawkes, Bruce Childs, Ted Wheelwright, Frank Walker, Pat O'Shane, Etta Rosales, Bob Connell, Chris Westwwod, Bill Hartley, Dr. Andrew Theophanous.
Australian Marxist Forum
ACU
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 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.
SPA
When the Socialist Party of Australia, a Committee of 25 was elected and they selected an Executive of 7 comprising Pat Clancy, Peter Symon, Bill Brown, Barbara Curthoys, Jack McPhillips, Jim Henderson and Les Kelton. Clancy was made Chairman and Symon became the Secretary. Clancy and Symon had extensive trade union experience; Clancy was the Secretary of the NSW Branch of the BWIU and on the ACTU Executive; Symon was the Vice President of the Port Adelaide Branch of the Waterside Workers' Federation (WWF). The Conference urged its members to organise locally. The SPA claimed to be ‘a party for working class unity – for peace, international solidarity and socialism – against monopoly and imperialism’.[5]