The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the biggest wave of strikes since the 1940s and the growth of radical currents in the Australian labour movement. Punitive labour laws were smashed by a general strike and real wages soared. Much of this action was powered by rank and file militancy, with union officials often irrelevant or marginal to developments. What explains this upsurge in militancy? How did it shape the politics of the period? And what were some of its limits that proved its undoing when the ruling class went on the attack in the mid-1970s?

OTHER SESSIONS IN THIS STREAM

• The Communist Party of Australia and the Unions in the 1940 and 1950s

• Unions, the ALP and the ebb tide 1983-1996