In November 1938, a ship called the Dalfram arrived at Port Kembla, Australia, to collect iron for Japan. Japan had invaded China and its army had massacred civilians in Nanjing. The Australian dockworkers knew what the iron might be used for. They refused to load it. The government threatened them with punitive legislation. Thousands of workers at the nearby steelworks lost their jobs. Christmas came and went. Families struggled to put food on the table. Still the dockworkers refused. They wanted nothing to do with supplying Japan’s war machine.
On 11 January 1939, Attorney-General Robert Menzies travelled to Wollongong to confront the workers. A crowd of around 1,000 greeted him. A woman named Gwendoline Croft reportedly shouted ‘Pig Iron Bob’, a nickname that would haunt Menzies for the rest of his political career. The crowd became so hostile that police asked union leader Ted Roach to arrange protection for him. And so Menzies, a fierce anti-communist, was escorted to safety by communist dockworkers. After ten weeks of resistance and enormous financial hardship, the men finally loaded the iron under protest, having forced concessions from the government. Three years later, Japanese aircraft bombed Darwin, Australia. The men who refused to supply Japan’s military had understood something their government preferred to ignore.
