BA History & Politics: Dip. Professional Writing & Editing

 

Lloyd Bray

ETU Honorary Member

Lloyd Bray was born in 1928. Three years later his father was run over by a truck and killed and so his values during his growing years were formed from the love and guidance of his mum. ‘One of my earliest memories, he remembers, is that beautiful feeling you get from your mother and that’s the feeling you get from a wife.’

As Lloyd began experiencing those beautiful feelings, the ETU was winning the fight for the electrical trades to be proclaimed as apprenticeship trades under the Act of 1928; and it was also claiming the right to be part of an Apprenticeship committee being formed for electrical trades. That resulted in three employer representatives and three ETU representatives being part of that committee. Irrelevant to Lloyd as an infant but it would, one day, shape the future of his working life.

But Lloyd had some growing up to do. It was the Great Depression and his main focus was getting about on his beautiful scooter, with his little legs propelling it through the streets of Coburg at a rate of knots. Then one day he lost it and on the way to school he saw it in a second-hand shop window and went home crying. ‘Mum said she’d had to sell it along with the kettle and other things to make ends meet…’

Even so, Lloyd and his mum were luckier than some; he had caring uncles who were around to keep the wolves from the door, as it were, and although his scooter was gone, Lloyd never went hungry. ‘I remember kids at school would want part of your sandwich because they didn’t have any. And my mum was a pretty good manager so I’d always have sandwiches and I’d always be sharing them.’

This was when I was in the salvos out on the street corners trying to get everyone to give up the grog, not beat their wives, and live a virtuous life as they say. Virtue is its own reward, not big enough for a lot of people, too big a price to pay for some people. I got put out of that when I did not want to wear a uniform.

In 1939 Lloyd prepared to enter his teenage years as Australia prepared to enter the Second World War; and suddenly he became aware of a world beyond his own. When he went to visit relations he noticed how their young sons had gone to fight in Europe and had been killed. At high school in Mooreland he became aware of the bombing of Pearl Harbour and wondered what would be next. And for him it was the Americans invading Victoria. ‘At night, we were in City Road, Coburg, when truck after truck was going up to Puckapunyal. All the GI’s had come in at Port Melbourne. It must have been when they exited the Philippines. Douglas Macarthur had to come and he was stationed in Toorak. And my mother used to go down to CampPell at RoyalPark and repair socks and whatever for the GI’s because she was in the Salvation Army. After the war they did that up as temporary housing and I was working on that as an apprentice…’

    Camp Pell.

But Lloyd had yet to become an apprentice.

In 1943, Lloyd was into the Melbourne dances, travelling by bus and tram to the Brunswick Town hall, Earl’s Court in St Kilda, the Dorchester, the St Kilda Town Hall, and Windsor to shake it about, on a Saturday night, with the girls of his time. One night he heard, from a mate, that there was the chance of an apprenticeship going at Claude Elders in Essendon. He got on his bike, rode up to the depot and spoke to the manager. He sold himself pretty well because the manager recognised his merit and Lloyd got a start to a five year apprenticeship as an electrical mechanic.

This is me about 15 yr old in the air league.
This was a step before the air cadets, then into the air force. We learnt a lot about aircraft and were used for marching pageants for the selling of war bonds. Also we were used for aircraft spotting in a room built on the top of walkers store in Coburg and also trained as junior air raid wardens which we were lucky not to be needed.

It was at this time that the ETU’s long time organiser, Jim Hudson died and Jock Innes became the new organiser. A chance meeting with Jock, yet to come, was to be another impressionable turning point in Lloyd’s working life. But for now he had an apprenticeship to get started.

On the second day that he turned up for work he was told to go and work at the TAA hangers at Essendon airport. He remembers the foreman saying; “Go up there on your bike with a few rolls of cable.” Lloyd’s reply was clear. ‘You must be out of your mind!’ And so they waited until a truck was going up to the job. ‘In those days I even objected to sitting on the back of a truck – like a dog!’ A readiness to fight for his rights was in his blood. The Second World War was for those who were older than him.

‘We didn’t have much of the war except that the Americans came and they went, and what we heard from those who had been. My girlfriend’s father who had a dry-cleaning business had a presser, who talked about his experiences on Kakoda. He was telling me about the hatred in New Guinea; the hatred was built up with many things that were happening up there and I am glad I was too young to be there.’

The returned soldiers also told Lloyd how they had had to restrict their intake of water and supplies to minimise their chances of infections due to the terrible conditions. ‘Another job I was on there was a chap who was back from Kakoda and he’d lost an eye in an explosion on the track; and his mates, there were some of his mates who were on the same job, said, ”We had to hold him, he wanted to go back and find his eye.” And I thought what a terrible thing. The men told me they were worried about the chap trying to go back for his eye as he would get killed by the Japanese.’

  ‘…It was just that people were coming back and telling us stories about Kakoda. And we didn’t realise the importance of it at the time; but did later when they say that it stopped Japanese building a big base that they could have invaded Australia. So I didn’t suffer any of those things. I heard about them and that’s all.

Lloyd went to work with Laurie Macintyre who he describes as a terrific unionist. Laurie was a carpenter who went to the West and became and electrician and came back. Their first job together was to go down to Servex and make an extension to a substation at TAA Essendon.

Lloyd and Laurie had to measure up the busbars so that they could be bent and drilled ready for the week-end when the changeover would occur. Mac said, “Now we can’t go off line…” so they worked within a live switchboard, Lloyd holding the bus-bar at one end while Mac compared, measured and marked the holes in the new bus-bar at the other. ‘Mac said,” ‘If you drop it we’re both dead!” I remember afterwards reading about all the different jobs where people had dropped spanners across a live terminals and thought; ‘Oh, not good!’  And Lloyd began to appreciate the risks they took and the need for a safety consciousness. Even so, it was a caring relationship with Mac in which warm lasting memories were formed.

In 1945, as the ETU began its campaign for a 40hr week, Mack took Lloyd into the great stone edifice of Trades Hall to meet his mate Jock Innes. ‘My first impression was that Jock was so friendly and understanding.’  Jock told Lloyd that; ‘…the apprenticeship commission was supposed to be looking after the apprentices for five years but the union said no, if their was problem with the apprenticeship commission they would put pressure. That was what I liked.’ And So on a hot day, 22 March 1945, Lloyd became an ETU member.

‘When I joined the union I attended the labor college which was a small room in the 8 hour day trades hall building. I would say that it gave a very good understanding of all the workers had gone through to form unions and communes that were always stamped out.  This would give the young apprentices an understanding of our place in history. At that time LABOR was in government and they started talking about nationalizing the banks so were promptly put out.’

One of Lloyd’s regular jobs during the latter half of the 1940s was to go into factories and change from one big motor turning a common shaft with over-head belts driving machines, to small fractional horsepower motors driving each individual machine. ‘In those days there was always somebody getting hooked up with the overhead belts and getting killed. We were doing jobs for Rothman’s, I remember, in Collingwood, and the machines were that close I had to get between peoples legs to get to a motor. I didn’t like that!’

Mac’s example of unionism was well learnt and put into practice soon after when Lloyd came across a Scotsman who had been sponsored, as a migrant, by a builder. ‘The only reason he’d sponsored him was that it got him a garage permit, and this chap lived in the garage for about two years on a dirt floor with his wife and his child and that’s why he was upset with the builder. But he was a good tradesman and I took him into the union because he was having trouble, and again Jock Innes got him into the union and he finished up working with us…’

As Lloyd’s working life moved into the 1950s the ETU was embroiled in the politics of support for the ALP and which side to support, the Catholic based Groupers who were communist haters or the old guard of Dr Evatt who supported the rights of the Communists to exist. But Lloyd’s focus was on getting married and building a house using the skills he’d learnt from Mac. The politics that surrounded him were of little interest. In fact he couldn’t care less about the feud going on between the Catholics and the Communists that resulted in the split in the ALP; a split that would cause the creation of the DLP keep Labor out of government for the next twenty years; he had a house to build.

‘My mate Mac was terrific; he taught me how do build a house.’ Lloyd had spent his week-ends working with Mac, learning how to swing a claw hammer, put up frames, and nail in noggins. Now he could turn those skills to building a house of his own in Beaumaris while the ETU officials fought and voted to turn its back on its Catholic led groupers in support of Doc Evatt and the old guard of the ALP and against the formation of the DLP led by Bob Santamaria. But the politics of the day imposed themselves on Lloyd regardless of his apparent disinterest.

‘I married a Catholic but I had a friend who was a Communist and I use to say to the Communist you’re as bad as the Catholics. Lloyd worked with a mate, on domestic jobs, who; ‘…was a Masonic and we’d go into a house to do a job he’d say, it’s your mob, there’s a crucifix; if we went in and saw it was Masonic I’d say, it’s your mob; your job to ask for morning tea!’

Lloyd did have some inkling of the political scene, though, even if little interest. ‘I thought it was a pity they broke away; that was with Dr Evatt. It’s a bad thing for politics; it was weakening the Labor Party. It was like that friend who said he was going to vote against the Communists. What’s wrong with the communists? ”Oh I don’t know but I’m voting against them.” I was upset that the man was voting against the communists and did not know what the vote was for.’

‘And I’ve always remembered this wonderful quote I saw in a Catholic Church:     
         WHEN I GIVE TO THE POOR I AM CALLED A CHRISTIAN
         WHEN I ASK WHY THERE ARE POOR
         I AM CALLED A COMMUNIST’
Amid all of the politics, Lloyd bought his land in Beaumaris for ₤500 and using the skills learnt from Mac he built his house. He was promised a loan by the Building Society but when the time came to build they said no. So he had a mate who was a carpenter and another who was a plumber and he got started anyway with the £250 he had saved. ‘I was working at Strand’s by then and I loved the flat roofs which Walter Burly Griffin used to build and they always leaked because there was never any good system of malthoid. I used to have to come home from Strand now and again because if the sun was out it would stretch the malthoid and then when the rain came there were gaps so the rain would come straight though until it settled down and I’d come back with bitumen. With flat roofs at that time there was no material better so had to repair with Malthoid and linen and finally an architect friend got me some LT6 aluminum which was used on factories when the material got plentiful.’

Lloyd moved from Strand’s to Rank as their nominee; he was to run the contracting section, working on street lighting, festoons etc.
‘I just went there because they wanted a contractor, with the Melbourne Theatre Company in Russell Street. I used to do small jobs but then they wanted me to re-wire the theatre. I said right I’ll work out how much it’s going to cost. I needed at least an assistant; I didn’t have any transport, I used to get dropped on a job by a chap that used to drop the manager off, but he was never available to on a Wednesday, they always went to the races with Alec Brown, the founder.

I said well this is what I need, and not the chairman but the auditor said, “Look we can’t afford it. If you’re happy to stay on and just do the occasional,” but then I went into sales and doing odd jobs and building things and I loved it… So I was happy to stay on there and I stayed on for 34 years. I thought they were so good.’

Wherever Lloyd went, and never within a union shop, he always had one eye on wages and conditions and never just for himself. ‘All the time I was working for different crowds I’d ring up the union if someone was unhappy. I’d ring up and see what the wages were, and they’d always say are there any problems? Do you want an organiser to come out? I’d say no, the firms always meet what the union says.’

Then while working for Rank, out at Clayton, looking after a group of non-union production workers, they kept asking him to find out about this condition or that wage  entitlement. So Lloyd organised them and got the employer to do the right thing and employ them under the metal trades award. And then while speaking to Charlie Faure, the ETU secretary of the time, Charlie asked: “You working as an electrician?”
“No.”
“You on salary?”
“Yes.”
“Well you don’t need to be in the union.”
“Yeah, but I wanna be able to go back to the trade too.”
“Then we’ll make you an honorary member.”

Although not a shop steward or in any other official position in the union, he was looking after other workers and their rights and entitlements wherever he could. The ETU secretary was recognising this selflessness, this true unionism of Lloyd Bray, by making him an ETU Honorary Member. And now even in his eighties Lloyd’s true selfless unionism is as strong as it ever was.

‘I like getting the ETU news but I sometimes feel guilty I get so much from the union… I get offered the tee shirts and everything… I always talk to people and I always stand up for unions…  I used to say to people now you like this wage. How was the wage got – by unions going and fighting the courts, spending the money… but they always wanted to take the award but they didn’t want to help.’

When Lloyd looks back over his life, it’s his time working in the theatre that stands out most. ‘…It was the entertainment. And I used to think I’d love to get into the theatre but I was never going to go and try and get a job and yet I probably would have got one but I would have stayed as a stage hand or something; but by doing my electrical apprenticeship and becoming an electrician I got in the right way. And that was installing equipment.’

And one of his most memorable electrical/theatrical experiences was the Queen’s visit to Canberra for the opening of the new Parliament House on 9 May 1988. ‘I was sent up with a truck load of lighting… Channel two, the head of opera, and they designed an exact model of Canberra, it was something like 40 by 30 feet and we had to do with lighting; sunrise, sunset and night with U.V. light. And so I went up with this truck and met this chap who was head of production for opera and we set this up and it was “What will happen to Australia if Asians start moving to Australia. How long have we got? That was the message; I’ll always remember it.’

‘It was all motorised; I’d set it up motorised to work, and about five minutes before the Queen came through on a catwalk around it, the bloody thing packed up and I found out that by holding a screwdriver in the relay it kept operating so I kept it there and all I saw of her was her legs.’

When Lloyd looks back on the ETU he feels that anyone in the electrical trades should be in the union because ‘…it’s the main backing; and the main people who will keep the trade special and from being diluted.’

‘I just hope that, you see I’m more peaceful negotiation, I hope we don‘t push it too hard that’s all. Because you push too hard with some power and power doesn’t like it does it? But you’ve still got to put the pressure on.’