On the same day, across the Tasman in Sydney and Melbourne, police staged mass raids on the offices of the Australian Seamen’s Union and the Australian Waterside Workers’ Federation, tearing out drawers, ransacking cabinets and confiscating large numbers of records and files. No one was arrested, but 4000 Sydney watersiders walked off the job and congregated at their union hall to register their protest, and to send a cable pledging continued ‘solidarity in the struggle’ to their fellow wharfies in New Zealand. There were walk-offs in Queensland and at Fremantle as well. The industrial action wasn’t a direct result of what was happening in New Zealand, but the enemy was the same, and when news filtered back to the New Zealand strikers, they took comfort from it. But the following day the tide had turned again, a lot closer to home when the watersiders at Port Chalmers voted en masse to return to work. Not a band of scabs cobbled together by the government, but the original union members.
