Mackie Plans Mt. Isa Revolution

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30736, 28 April 1965, Page 17

Mackie Plans Mt. Isa Revolution

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

BRISBANE, April 27.

The unofficial leader of the long and costly Mount Isa mine strike, Pat Mackie, told reporters in Brisbane yesterday that he was going back to Mount Isa to start a revolution.

New Zealand-born Mackie made a stop-over in Brisbane on his way back to Mount Isa from Sydney. He was the leader of the committee for membership control, a breakaway group of Australian Workers’ Union members of Mount Isa. Mackie said he intended to start a revolution going in the mine town. “What else can you do when they are victimising working people up there the way they are?” he asked. “The mines have victimised

47 decent guys up there whose only fault is that they are hard men who know how to ask for an increase in wages the right way. “They have about 130 children and some of them are Finns who can’t speak a word of English." He would appeal to local craft union leaders to “pull their men out of the mine” and would call an immediate meeting of the C.M.C. Mackie told reporters he could show Mount Isa miners he had been working in their interests in the four weeks he had been away from the town. “I have collected more than 800 signatures to a petition seeking court-controlled ballots for union positions with the A.W.U.,” he said.