Rod Pickette

Rod Pickette

TUCAR

The Trade Union Committee on Aboriginal Rights (TUCAR) was formally set up in a 1977 meeting attended by Tranby staff Kevin Cook and Rev. Alf Clint, along with South Coast Elders Jacko Campbell and Gubboo Ted Thomas, Marcia Langton from the Black Defence Group and supportive unionists Rod Pickette, Sergio Zorino, Meredith Burgmann, Hannah Middleton, and others. Along with the Maritime unions and the Building Unions, the new organisation gained rapid support from the Missos (the Miscellaneous Workers Union) and the unions in Education, Banking and Health. These and other unions affiliated with TUCAR to back Aboriginal campaigns and to get better conditions for Aboriginal workers.

The TUCAR committee met regularly first in the NSW Trades Hall and then later at the NSW Teachers Federation building in Surry Hills. With funding from unions and from employment grants, TUCAR was able to employ a full-time coordinator, with Lee Silva and others before Kevin Tory took up this role in 1987. TUCAR was also able to employ several Aboriginal employees, a number of whom were Tranby staff or graduates like Margaret Friel and Veronica Collett.

Chile demo

On 11 September 1974, demonstrations against the repression in Chile took place as scheduled in several locations in Australia.

In Sydney, a statement supporting the demonstration and demanding an open platform at LAN Chile was endorsed by Peter McGregor, Mike Matterson and Dorothy Coates of the Sydney Anarchist Group; Bob Gould; NSW MLA George Petersen; Henry Mayer, a professor at Sydney University; David Scott (AMWU member); T. Parnell (Hurstville Resident Action Group); Peter Tieman, Rod Pickette, Brian Dale (YLA members); the Spartacist League; and a number of individuals.

Also approached were the Healyite Socialist Labour League (SLL); the Glebe-Balmain branch of the CPA; the Newcastle Young Communists; the Pablo-Pabloite Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (RMT); and Jim Baird and Senator Arthur Gietzelt, two of the scheduled CSCP speakers.

The SWL and CL refused to support the statement. The Glebe-Balmain CPA pleaded unclarity on the events, after the intervention of Denis Freney against an open platform. Baird explicitly rejected an open platform. Gietzelt professed his "sympathy" but refused to do anything on grounds of expediency. Also chickening out was the RMT, because they did not want to be identified with the issue during the "crucial" Leichhardt Council election -campaign then in progress.