A new study says that government schools are the clear “losers” from government funding of private schools over the past four decades.

It shows that government funding of private schools in Australia has increased socio-economic segregation between government and private schools and allowed private schools to improve school quality rather than reduce their fees.

Government funding of private schools has led to much higher concentrations of lower SES students in government schools.

This has widened the achievement gap between government and private schools and imposed much higher cost burdens on government schools.

As a result, the study says, government schools should receive higher funding per student than private schools.

The study also says that private schools will continue to use government funding to improve school quality by reducing student/teacher ratios and attract higher SES students away from government schools unless their funding is made conditional on regulation of fees and selection of students.

The study is published in the latest issue of the Australian Journal of Education. The authors are Dr. Louise Watson from the University of Canberra and Dr. Chris Ryan from the Research School of Economics at the Australian National University.

The study shows that government recurrent funding for private schools increased in real terms (that is, adjusted for inflation) from about $500 per Catholic secondary school student in the early 1970s to over $6000 in 2007 and from less than $1000 per Independent secondary student to about $5000 in 2007.

It demonstrates that private schools have used increased government funding to increase school quality by reducing student/teacher ratios rather than to reduce fees and open up their schools to students from low socio-economic status (SES) families.

School fees have continued to increase in real terms: Catholic school fees increased by 160% from the early 1970s to 2002 in real terms while Independent school fees increased by 70%.

These increases far exceeded increases in real income over the same period: per capital real household disposable income increased by 46% between 1972 and 2002 while real male average weekly earnings increased by 26%.

The additional resources available for private schools from increased government funding and fees allowed them to significantly improve student/teacher ratios.

In the early 1970s, there were about 23-24 students to every teacher in Catholic secondary schools; by 2007, it was less than 13 per teacher. The ratio for Independent secondary schools fell from over 14 to 10.5 students per teacher. The student/teacher ratio in government schools fell from 15 to just over 12 over the same period.

The improvement in student/teacher ratios in private schools has been much greater than in government schools.

The student/teacher ratio in Catholic secondary schools as a proportion of the government school student/teacher ratio fell from about 1.4 to 1.0 in 2008. The Independent school proportion relative to government schools fell from 1.1 to less than 0.9.

The study shows a strong relationship between the relative improvement in private school student/teacher ratios relative to government schools and their increasing share of total enrolments.

Improving student/teacher ratios enabled by government funding and fee increases has been a factor in the shift in enrolments to private schools since the early 1980s.

The study also shows that increasing school fees have ensured that it is mainly higher SES families that have been able to take advantage of the improvement in private school quality.

The students who transferred from government to private schools between 1975 and 2006 tended to be from the middle to the top SES families. About 60% of the decline in government school enrolments over the period was from the top half of the SES distribution.

Those who transferred were from above-average SES families relative to the 1975 government school population, but below the average SES of the 1975 private school population.

This meant that while the average SES of students in government schools fell between 1975 and 2006, the average SES of private school students also fell by more than for government schools.

However, the average SES of both Catholic and Independent schools remained significantly higher than that of government schools in 2006.

The transfer of higher SES students to private schools has significantly changed the socio-economic composition of government secondary schools.

In contrast to 1975, the majority of students in government secondary schools in 2006 attended schools whose SES is below average. Moreover, the proportion of government secondary schools with concentrations of low SES students increased between 1975 and 2006.

In 1975, there were two more common types of government secondary schools: one with students from SES backgrounds well below the average of the community and one with students whose SES was above average. In 2006, government schools with above average SES were less common. Indeed, the average SES of the ‘high’ SES-type government schools was below the average SES of the community.

The study draws two significant implications for education policy from its findings.

First, a widening of student achievement between government and private schools can be expected because of the lower average SES of students in the government sector.

It is a well-established research finding that student SES has a significant impact on educational attainment. As lower SES students now make up a higher proportion of government school enrolments average achievement levels in government schools can be expected to be lower than in private schools.

Further, the higher concentrations of low SES students in government schools can be expected add more downward pressure on student achievement.

A second implication is that this trend can be expected to increase costs per student in the government sector. It means that the cost of educating a government school student to an agreed standard will always be higher than in a private school.

Government school systems also bear the additional costs of taking all students regardless of background and supporting small schools in rural areas.

As result, the study recommends that government schools should be funded at a higher level per student than private schools.

…when governments set funding benchmarks for all schools, they should expect private schools to operate effectively at a lower level of resources per student than private schools. This is a reasonable assumption as long as private schools enrol a smaller proportion of low SES students than public schools and are free of any expectations regarding universal provision. [p.104]

The study also suggests that strong government regulation of fees and enrolments in private schools should be minimum requirements in any funding system aiming to expand educational opportunities by supporting private school choice.

Trevor Cobbold National Convenor
26 July 2010

The publication details of the study are as follows:

Watson, L. & Ryan, C 2010. Choosers and Losers: The Impact of Government Subsidies on Australian Secondary Schools. Australian Journal of Education, 54 (1): 86-107.

SOS – Fighting for Equity in Education

http://www.saveourschools.com.au

Your rights at work

Since the early 1970′s OHS law has been “de-lawyer-fied”.

The intention of the law is to empower workers and employers to manage safety in the workplace to meet basic human rights – the right not to be injured at work, the obligation not to hurt others.

Good law allows for the basic legislative tenets to be readily understood. Poor law is difficult to understand and leads to increased business and personal costs in order to determine compliance.

I would argue that Australia’s recent aim of the national harmonisation of OHS laws will lead to complexity and cost – the opposite of what was intended – and a disempowerment of the workforce as the legal imperative overrides the safety management obligation.

The major weakness in the law is its seeming reliance on the Courts to clarify the laws, their application and their relevance.

Legal commentators on the laws have stated publicly that the impact of the law will not be clear for several years and that many questions about the laws will only be answered when prosecutions are brought and the Courts hand down decisions.

This process is sloppy, should not be accepted unquestionably by OHS professionals and does almost nothing to help the vast majority of Australian businesses to comply.

The argument is that the laws will not change but be harmonised. The fact is that in some States, the laws will change and change for businesses that have no trans-boundary operations.

OHS laws, enforcement strategies and impacts in Australia would benefit from a review similar to that undertaken by Thomas McGarity and others at the University of Marylands School of Law, as reported in the Regulation At Work newsletter. According to the newsletter:

“The authors suggest that regulatory dysfunction stems from the agency [US-OSHA] being starved of resources, operating under a statute weakened by 30 years of appellate court decisions and White House initiatives that increase time and effort needed to implement a proactive regulatory agenda.”

There are distinct similarities with OHS enforcement and regulation in Australia.

http://safetyatworkblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/ohs-law-reform-should-not-rely-of-courts-for-clarification/

His ‘crime’? Sticking up for his safety rights on site and then refusing to be coerced into an interview with the unfair Australian Building and Construction Commission.

For this, Ark now faces up to six months in jail.

But most Australians are still asleep to what the ABCC is or how it trashes the rights of ordinary working people like Ark.

If they learn the truth they will want to defend construction workers who operate in an industry where safety is a daily matter of life and death.

A tragic reminder of this came on Friday, when a construction worker was killed by a falling steel beam at Adelaide’s desalination plant site.

Rallies are being held around the entire country to mark Ark’s trial on July 20, 21 and 22, but we need a mass of people to turn up if Australia is going to actually sit up and take notice.

Your voice needs to be heard to end this injustice.

Workers standing up for their rights have changed Australia for the better throughout history and we need that to continue this week.

Rallies kick off in Ark’s hometown of Adelaide, starting from the Tent Embassy in Victoria Square at 8:30am.

There will be one near you, just check the full list of times and locations below.

Show your support for Ark and make the nation aware of what the ABCC actually does to ordinary construction workers.

We’ll be tweeting updates from the court, you can follow us on #dontjailark

July 20
Adelaide, South Australia -Tent Embassy, Victoria Square, 8:30am
Sydney, NSW – Sydney Town Hall, George St, 12pm
Melbourne, Victoria – March to ABCC offices, Cnr St. Kilda and Toorak Roads, 10am
Canberra, ACT – on-site meetings over the three days of Ark’s Trial
Perth, WA – March to office of ABCC, Perth Esplanade (near glass pyramid), 10am
Warrnambool, VIC – Cannon Park, 10am

July 21, 22:
Wonthaggi, VIC – Lions Park, 1:30pm (July 21)
Brisbane, QLD – Roma St Forum, 10am (July 22)
Gold Coast, QLD – Southport Broadwater Parklands, Gold Coast H’way, 10am (July 22)

Rights on site campaigns to abolish the ABCC

Bolivia’s UN ambassador, Pablo Solón, gave this talk to the Shout Out for Global Justice, sponsored by the Council of Canadians and attended by nearly 3,000 people on June 25 in Toronto, during the ten days of protests against the G20 meeting.

Other speakers included Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians and Indian eco-feminist Vandana Shiva. Video of the event can be viewed at rabbletv.

Read more

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/390.php#continue

right to strike on the environment

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/7590095/new-strike-hits-honda-parts-supplier-in-china/

Don Durfee, Reuters July 15, 2010, 3:54 pm
HONG KONG (Reuters) – A strike has broken out at a south China factory supplying parts for Japan’s Honda Motor, the latest in a string of stoppages by Chinese workers demanding a bigger piece of the country’s economic wealth.

The strike, at Atsumitec Co. in the city of Foshan, began on Monday, with 170 workers striking after management fired about 100, a worker who declined to give his name told Reuters by telephone.

“The local government has sent police to our factory and will be here in the afternoon,” he said.

A Honda spokeswoman in Tokyo said the factory supplies shift levers (gear sticks) to the car maker’s local plants, and said the workers had been on strike since July 12.

She said the action has not had any impact yet on Honda’s car-making operations in China, some of which were affected last month by strikes at other parts makers.

The new strike marks the end of a couple of weeks of relative calm for foreign-run Chinese factories, which saw several weeks of work stoppages in May and June by laborers demanding higher wages.

The government appears to be prepared to let such strikes continue as a way to let wages gradually rise, said Geoffrey Crothall of the China Labour Bulletin.

“I think it’s going to happen throughout the year. It’s not going away unless the government stops it. But it’s the government’s position that they really want to raise income level in order to support the consumption growth of the country,” he said.

“And we are seeing rising expectations on the part of workers — people know that other factories are having these pay raises and they will expect that from their own employers.”

TURBULENT JUNE

The strike follows a turbulent period in June, which saw hundreds of workers at a number of foreign-owned factories, many of those in the affluent Pearl River Delta, walk off the job demanding better pay.

Japan’s top automaker, Toyota Motor, was also affected by labor unrest, but is confident it can handle such situations going forward, a China-based executive told China’s official Xinhua news agency.

The report, unrelated to the labor action in Foshan, cited Liu Peng, Toyota Motor (China) Investment Co Ltd, saying the company was confident it could “properly handle labor disputes, which are increasingly being heard as Chinese workers become more vocal about their interests.”

“In the long-term, Toyota will also build a platform for better communication between management and employees,” Liu was quoted as saying.

ASSERTIVE WORKERS

The strikes also highlight how just-in-time manufacturing, now highly popular among western manufacturers, can put companies at risk because it allows little margin for error when supply chains get disrupted.

The strikes are a symptom of a broader trend that many investors will have to consider: a Chinese workforce becoming more assertive and selective, and sometimes inclined to protest by strikes, slow-downs and, most often, quitting.

“The chance of more strikes increases the more successful the previous strikes are. There’s been more and more communication between workers and advocacy groups,” said Duncan Innes-Ker, Beijing-based China analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“The workers have networks to exchange information even when there has been a state media blackout. The example set in one place tends to encourage others.”

The wave of current unrest hit a peak in June, but reports tapered off at the end of the month. The last reported stoppage, at Japanese-owned Tianjin Mitsumi Electric Co, ended on July 3.

China’s domestic media have been largely mute about the strikes, apparently due to state censorship. But Xinhua has issued reports about the unrest on its English-language service.

Labour costs in China have been rising, partly encouraged by a government that wants to turn farmers and workers into more confident consumers, even as it tries to keep a lid on strikes.

Earlier strikes disrupted production at auto makers Toyota and Honda, and have laid bare the rising demands of China’s 150 million migrant workers, especially younger ones wanting to secure a foothold in urban areas.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard and Emma Graham-Harrison in Beijing and Chang-Ran Kim in Tokyo; Writing by Doug Young; Editing by Alex Richardson)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/technology/06iphone.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&src=busln

New York Times

IPhone Supply Chain Highlights Rising Costs in China

By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: July 06, 2010

SHENZHEN, China – Last month, while enthusiastic consumers were playing with their new Apple iPhone 4, researchers in Silicon Valley were engaged in something more serious.

They cracked open the phone’s shell and started analyzing the new model’s components, trying to unmask the identity of Apple’s main suppliers. These “teardown reports” provide a glimpse into a company’s manufacturing.

What the latest analysis shows is that the smallest part of Apple’s costs are here in Shenzhen, where assembly-line workers snap together things like microchips from Germany and Korea, American-made chips that pull in Wi-Fi or cellphone signals, a touch-screen module from Taiwan and more than 100 other components.

But what it does not reveal is that manufacturing in China is about to get far more expensive.

Soaring labor costs caused by worker shortages and unrest, a strengthening Chinese currency that makes exports more expensive, and inflation and rising housing costs are all threatening to sharply increase the cost of making devices like notebook computers, digital cameras and smartphones.

Desperate factory owners are already shifting production away from this country’s dominant electronics manufacturing center in Shenzhen toward lower-cost regions far west of here, even deep in China’s mountainous interior.

At the end of June, a manager at Foxconn Technology – one of Apple’s major contract manufacturers – said the company planned to reduce costs by moving hundreds of thousands of workers to other parts of China, including the impoverished Henan Province.

While the labor involved in the final assembly of an iPhone accounts for a small part of the overall cost – about 7 percent by some estimates – analysts say most companies in Apple’s supply chain – the chip makers and battery suppliers and those making plastic moldings and printed circuit boards – depend on Chinese factories to hold down prices.

And those factories now seem likely to pass along their cost increases.

“Electronics companies are trying to figure out how to deal with the higher costs,” says Jenny Lai, a technology analyst at CLSA, an investment bank based in Hong Kong. “They’re already squeezed, so squeezing more costs out of the system won’t be easy.”

Apple can cope better than most companies because it has fat profit margins of as much as 60 percent and pricing power to absorb some of those costs.

But makers of personal computers, cellphones and other electronics – including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and LG – deal with much slimmer profit margins according to several analysts.

“The challenges are going to be much bigger for them,” Ms. Lai said. Most other industries, from textiles and toys to furniture, are under considerably more pressure.

One way to understand the changes taking shape in southern China is to follow the supply chain of the iPhone 4, which was designed by Apple engineers in the United States, sourced with high-tech components from around the world and assembled in China.

Shipped back to the United States, the iPhone is priced at $600, though the cost to consumers is less, subsidized by AT&T in exchange for service contracts.

“China makes very little money on these things,” said Jason Dedrick, a professor at Syracuse University and an author of several studies of Apple’s supply chain.

Much of the value in high-end products is captured at the beginning and end of the process, by the brand and the distributors and retailers.

According to the latest teardown report compiled by iSuppli, a market research firm in El Segundo, Calif., the bulk of what Apple pays for the iPhone 4′s parts goes to its chip suppliers, like Samsung and Broadcom, which supply crucial components, like processors and the device’s flash-memory chip.

In the iPhone 4, more than a dozen integrated circuit chips account for about two-thirds of the cost of producing a single device, according to iSuppli.

Apple, for instance, pays Samsung about $27 for flash memory and $10.75 to make its (Apple-designed) applications processor; and a German chip maker called Infineon gets $14.05 a phone for chips that send and receive phone calls and data. Most of the electronics cost much less.

The gyroscope, new to the iPhone 4, was made by STMicroelectronics, based in Geneva, and added $2.60 to the cost.

The total bill of materials on a $600 iPhone – the supplies that go into final assembly – is $187.51, according to iSuppli.

The least expensive part of the process is manufacturing and assembly. And that often takes place here in southern China, where workers are paid less than a dollar an hour to solder, assemble and package products for the world’s best-known brands.

No company does more of it than Foxconn, a division of the Hon Hai Group of Taiwan, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer.

With 800,000 workers in China alone and contracts to supply Apple, Dell and H.P., Foxconn is an electronics goliath that also sources supplies, designs parts and uses its enormous size and military-style efficiency to assemble and speed a wide range of products to market.

“They’re like Wal-Mart stores,” Professor Dedrick said. “They’re low-margin, high-volume. They survive by being efficient.”

The world of contract manufacturers is invisible to consumers.

But it’s a $250 billion industry, with just a handful of companies like Foxconn, Flextronics and Jabil Circuit manufacturing and assembling for all the global electronics brands.

They compete fiercely on price to earn small profit margins, analysts say. And they seek to benefit from tiny operational changes.

When a company is operating on the slimmest of profit margins as contract manufacturers are, soaring labor costs pose a serious problem. Wages in China have risen by more than 50 percent since 2005, analysts say, and this year many factories, under pressure from local governments and workers who feel they have been underpaid for too long, have raised wages by an extra 20 to 30 percent.

China’s currency has also appreciated sharply against the United States dollar since 2005, and after a two-year pause by Beijing, economists expect the renminbi to rise about 3 to 5 percent a year for the next several years.

“It takes 3,000 procedures to assemble an H.P. computer,” says Isaac Wang, an iSuppli analyst based in China. “If a contract manufacturer can find a way to save 10 percent of the procedures, then it gets a real good deal.”

Contract manufacturers like Foxconn are now searching for ways to reduce costs. Foxconn is considering moving inland, where wages are 20 to 30 percent lower. The company is also spending heavily on manufacturing many of the parts, molds and metals that are used in computers and handsets, even trying to find larger and cheaper sources of raw material.

“We either outsource the components manufacturing to other suppliers, or we can research and manufacture our own components,” says Arthur Huang, a Foxconn spokesman. “We even have contracts with mines which are located near our factories.”

Many analysts are optimistic the big brands will find new innovations to improve profitability. But within the crowd, there is growing skepticism about China’s manufacturing model after years of pressing workers to toil six or seven days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day.

“We’ve concluded Hon Hai’s labor-intensive model is not sustainable,” says Mr. Wang at iSuppli Research. “Though it can keep hiring 800,000 to one million workers, the problem is these workers can’t keep working like screws in an inhuman system.”

This type of low-end assembly work is also no longer favored in China, analysts say, because it does not produce big returns for the companies or the country. “China doesn’t want to be the workshop of the world anymore,” says Pietra Rivoli, a professor of international business at Georgetown University and author of “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy.”

“The value goes to where the knowledge is.”

Chen Xiaoduan contributed research.

China's workers protesting

They will keep Gillard’s Fair Work Act ‘that is not bad’, but with ‘tweaking’.

The ruling corporations and employer organisations know major sections of WorkChoices remain in the Fair Work Act.

Gillard and Crean promise no changes to the Fair Work Act.

Australian workers campaigned for Our Rights at Work. But as this blog shows, citing ACTU submissions, the Fair Work Act fails to deliver what was wanted for new legal effective rights.

WorkChoices has not disappeared, in the real world of industrial relations and laboor law.

This spin of the 2010 election is like Orwell’s 1984.

Abbott and Abetz are targeted on their lies by unions. See ACTU press releases below.

As well, union activists are campaigning amongst union members in marginal seats in a strong anti-Abott push.

We see Abetz committing to not change the Fair Work Act.

This is unbelieveable in the face of demands by the corporates and their associations the BCA, Minerals Council, Mines and metals, AIG, MBA etc.

But Abetz admits ‘tweaking’.

Such as by regulation!

Regulations avoids Parliament.

Here is one example amongst hundreds.

Howard under WorkChoices had repressive anti-union ‘prohibited content’ regulations.

These extensive regulations banned unions and employers from agreement on many issues that these parties wanted to agree on.

These regulations were a severe breach of free collective bargaining.

Employers were forbidden to agree in collective enterprise bargaining to long-established rights.

One right forbidden was trade union training leave.

Union training is back under the Fair Work Act – see earlier blogs.

Abetz with his legal corporate lawyers will “tweak” regulations to continue making employees active in their unions ineffective and bias employers.

Prohibition by regulation severely legally restricted the ability for unions facing hostile management to disorganise.

WorkChoices’ essential anti-union thrust can be reintroduced as tweaks by the right-wing zealot Abetz – no doubt.

In the anti-Abott campaigning, unions promote the principles of a good industrial relations system.

The legislative framework has to be an advance of a labour law for the legal protection of collective rights for workers to effectively campaign for our economic, social and political interests.

Yet has Gillard a ‘way forward’ for workers’ rights?

Only minimally.

On the merits of industrial relations policy reform, the Greens have to be supported – at the local, regional and national level – and specifically in the Senate.

Here in Canberra, Lin Hatfield Dodds is the Greens candidate for one of the two ACT Senate positions.

The popular Labor Senator Kate Lundy Canberra will be returned comfortably.

Canberra has to reject the incumbent Liberal Senator Garry Humphries – in the past it was close. We shall see this time.

Abbott and Abetz are targeted on their lies by unions.

ACTU Your Rights at Work

Coalition and WorkChoices pose big risks to jobs and Australia’s economic recovery

15 July, 2010
The biggest clouds on the horizon for working Australians are Tony Abbott’s plans to change the economic policy directions of the country and bring back the worst aspects of WorkChoices.

Australia’s economy is outperforming the rest of the developed world because of good management by the Labor Government and industrial stability from the Fair Work Act, but this would all be put at risk by the Coalition, said ACTU President Ged Kearney.

Ms Kearney said more than 350,000 jobs were created over the past year, coinciding with the end of WorkChoices, and another 475,000 were forecast over the next two years.

But the reintroduction of WorkChoices and savage cuts to public services and infrastructure investment under the Coalition would jeopardise all that, Ms Kearney said.

She said the Labor Government’s economic record was in stark contrast to the Coalition’s plans.

“Last year as the Global Financial Crisis threatened Australia, the Government took tough decisions that protected jobs and set a platform for the recovery,” Ms Kearney said.

“Yesterday’s updated economic statement from Treasury gives working Australians cause for optimism for the next few years.

“The Labor Government’s Budget provides for investment in national infrastructure, skills and training, productivity and participation, better healthcare, and long-term improvements to national savings.

“Australia’s public debt is lower than almost all developed economies, and the Budget will be back in surplus within three years.

“The Liberal alternative would hurt working families.

“Tony Abbott opposes measures to stimulate the economy, will cut jobs and public services and is refusing to increase superannuation.

The Liberals will also abandon the National Broadband Network and wind back other key infrastructure projects.

“His main economic policy is to bring back WorkChoices by another name.”

Rights for working Australians is key issue for 2010 election
17 July, 2010 | Media Release This federal election is about the rights of all working Australians and the threat of a future return to WorkChoices under the Coalition, say unions.

Australian unions welcome the announcement today by Prime Minister Julia Gillard of a federal election on August 21, said ACTU President Ged Kearney.

Ms Kearney said the 2010 election will be a referendum on the rights of people to have job security and decent working conditions.

“In this election working Australians have a clear choice between the Coalition which brought in WorkChoices and Labor which restored rights and protected jobs during the Global Financial Crisis.

“Unions will be campaigning in the election to ensure working Australians know the facts about the Coalition’s record of attacking workers’ rights and putting jobs and services for working families at risk.

“Australia’s economy is the best-performing in the developed world and 1000 new jobs a week have been created since the end of WorkChoices and the introduction of Labor’s Fair Work laws.

“Real wages have grown with low paid workers gaining a $26 a week pay increase and productivity is almost four times higher than under the Liberals’ last year in government.

“The Labor Government deserves credit for making a very solid start considering the difficulties of the GFC and working Australians and unions will expect more from its next term.

“The election of a Tony Abbott government will hurt working families.

“The Coalition opposes stimulus measures that are protecting hundreds of thousands of jobs and will cut government funding for jobs, infrastructure and important health and education services that families rely upon.

“The Coalition will abandon the National Broadband Network and other infrastructure projects and skills programs that are essential to drive national productivity.

“Workers will also be denied financial security in retirement by the Coalition’s refusal to support Labor’s move to increase national superannuation to 12%,” said Ms Kearney.

http://www.actu.org.au

yraw voting-badge

http://leftfocus.blogspot.com/2010/06/legacy-rudd-labor-and-challenge.html

first join a union

At the rally they were very powerful, passionate speakers in defence of political prisoners and those who the law won’t protect.

Remember the Birmingham Six? “They all said what happened to us would never happen again”

Johnny Walker – A terrible injustice
from Irish Republican News, Nov 23, 2009

Thirty five years ago, six Irishmen were jailed for crimes they did not commit, and spent 16 years in jail before their convictions were quashed.

As blows rained down on Johnny Walker’s stomach during a brutal beating at the hands of the police, he realised that in saying almost nothing, he had still said too much. “They were beating me up and my shirt came open and I told them I had stomach ulcers, so all the punches went down there… I should have shut my big mouth,” he says, his voice quavering.

Even now – 35 years after he was wrongly convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings – the trauma he endured has left raw mental scars to go with the physical marks left by torture and beatings at the hands of the police and prison officers. “I still got parts of my body that is not right… they knocked all my teeth out… I’ll carry these scars to my grave.”

Walker was one of six men – with Richard McIlkenny, Paddy Hill, Hugh Callaghan, Billy Power and Gerry Hunter – wrongly jailed for killing 21 people and injuring 182 others 35 years ago on 21 November 1974. Once the police and prison guards got their hands on him, they inflicted violent vengeance before the courts could even begin to consider justice.

He shakes at the memory of what happened to him: “I’m paying the price now [for] what they done to me…” According to the doctor who visited him all those years ago, his body was covered in cuts and bruises. But physical trauma paled compared to the mental assault. In a statement made to his solicitors at the time, he told of becoming “completely deranged” as a result of the repeated beatings and psychological torture of mock executions, where he was made to believe he would be shot in the head.

Then he spent more than 16 years in prison in what was later described as one of “the greatest disasters to have shaken British justice in my time” by the late Lord Devlin, a former law lord and Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal. It cost Walker his wife, children, home, health, almost his sanity.

Speaking at his home in a remote corner of Donegal, where the 74-year-old lives with his second wife, Paivi, 50, and son Martti, 15, he said: “I can remember it all from yesterday. I can tell you, from the day it happened, what happened that day, to the day I die. It’s planted in your mind – you never forget that.”

He added: “I’m standing here shaking like a leaf, so I am, oh aye, yes… it brings it all back. That’s why I try and keep it out. I don’t like talking about it too much, it all comes back to you… “ He slumps, bowed under the weight of every one of his 74 years. “… just like yesterday.”

When, finally, he was freed, he withdrew from mankind and stayed withdrawn. He lives a quiet life in a tiny village on the north-west coast of Ireland. “I don’t trust anybody any more. It’s a sad thing to say. When you meet people for the first time, you’re always a wee bit wary about them.”

The inside of his immaculate three-bed house – down the end of a dirt track overlooking the sea – gives no clue to his past. The nearest neighbour is a couple of minutes’ walk away. It is an isolated but beautiful setting, underpinned by calm and routine. Every morning, he takes his labrador cross, Mukka, for a walk along the beach before returning to his home.

But its walls and the idyllic surroundings are not enough to keep out savage, marauding memories. Terrifying flashbacks come regularly. He doesn’t want to give details: “You go to bed, you have these dreams. You wake up and you’re covered in sweat.”

Recalling this prompts bitterness at what was done to him and the insult added to injury when not a single police or prison officer was punished.

He has spent years escaping the notoriety of being one of the Birmingham Six. The only other member of the six he keeps in touch with is Gerry Hunter, and it has been 18 years since he last gave an interview to a national newspaper. “I haven’t spoken to anybody for years. This is my last interview… as we say, enough is enough. I’ve got to get on with life. I’m getting old now.

“I just want to walk into the pub, just be an individual. Go and have a drink with me friends and not people pointing you out and talking about you… I mean I think it would have stopped after all these years, but it’s still there.”

He was 39 and married with seven children when he was arrested on his way to the funeral of an IRA member, James McDade, on the night of the bombings. That the six were Irish and also knew McDade seemed to be all the evidence the police and courts needed. They were convicted in 1975 and sentenced to life.

By the time he finally got out, his family were strangers to him: he was divorced from his wife, Theresa, less than a year after being freed. “It was sad; two strangers living under the same roof.” He lost contact with most of his children – the worst thing of all, he says. His youngest daughter, Joanna, was two when he went to jail. He emerged to find her a grown woman: “I had seven children, but I didn’t know them.”

It was hard to adjust: “You would sit in a conversation where everybody’s laughing and joking, and you wouldn’t know what they were talking about… you’re not involved in it, you’re not a part of the family.”

He spent a year and a half drinking: at one point getting through two bottles of vodka a day. “If I was drunk, the whole world passed me by. I couldn’t handle life as I wasn’t part of that life.” Things began spiralling out of control. He told his sister he needed help. “They brought me down here to Donegal, in a wee house by the beach, kept me out of the pubs. Then, after six months, I met this second lady of mine, my wife now. She come over from Finland and looked after me.” That was 16 years ago.

These days “it all depends how you wake up in the morning… I’m like an Aborigine, I go walkabout for a couple of days in a world of my own sometimes… I’m not the nicest person sometimes to live with, but that’s not my fault; I can’t help it.

“Even now, talking about it, I do get a wee bit wired up… but I have got to bring it out now and again to get it out of my system.

“We’re getting older now and we’re getting sentimental. We look back at life and what we’ve lost… It’s hard enough to be locked away when you’ve done something… but if you’ve done nothing it’s very, very hard.”

The case is an indelible black mark on the British judicial system: confessions obtained by systematic beatings; statements doctored.

The convictions were finally quashed on appeal in 1991, but they had to wait another decade before getting compensation. Incredibly, money was deducted for their stay in prison.

No one has been brought to justice for the bombings and case will not be reopened “in a million years”, he says: “There’s too much scandal.

All I can say is that we never done it, the police know who done it – they knew from day one who done it, and still they put me in prison.”

He admits “hatred” for the British authorities: “Everybody’s a terrorist as far as they’re concerned now,” he adds, referring to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. “If you’re a coloured chap and you’re on a train and you’re carrying a bag, it’s ‘oh, like watch him, he’s a terrorist’… it’s awful.

“They all said what happened to us would never happen again… but the Pakistanis, the Indians, these different nationalities, they’re getting the backlash now. I don’t think there’s been much change, to be honest.”

The very notion of an apology from the Government fires him up further: “There’s no chance the British government is going to apologise to six Irish men, no chance! The justice we got was: after 16 and a half years they let us out of prison. They thought they were doing us a good turn. I don’t want their apology. I know I was right and they were wrong… that does me. We’ve got to bury the hatchet one day, and I think it is buried after tonight.”

His voice is quiet: “What happened to us should never happen again. We pray it never happens to anybody.”

The Best Hated Man in Australia
The Life and Death of Percy Brookfield 1875 – 1921
by Paul Robert Adams

They don’t make politicians like ‘Jack’ Brookfield anymore.

From mining underground in Broken Hill he ‘rose like a meteor in public life’ to be possibly the most extreme anti-politician ever to be elected in this country.

The Great War and the years that followed saw unprecedented
political turmoil in Australia, and Brookfield was in the thick of it.

By the time he was fatally shot at Riverton in South Australia, Brookfield held the balance of power in NSW and had played major roles in many of the era’s main political and industrial events: the Big Strike, the plot of the ‘IWW Twelve’ to burn down Sydney, and the bitter national conscription debate.

‘Percy Brookfield was a giant among labour leaders.

In life, as in the manner of death, he made personal sacrifice the measure of his political commitment.

Morally and physically fearless, his probity withstood parliament.

Paul Adams has given us a biography as thoroughly gripping as it is thoroughly researched. Inspiration floods from its pages’.
—Humphrey McQueen

‘Both the radical life and untimely death of Percy Brookfield are the stuff of Australian labour legend. Finally, we have a biography that, while stating the case for Brookfield, richly contextualises and analyses his brief but turbulent career in trade unionism and radical politics. In this fine book, Paul Robert
Adams has created a vivid portrait of a militant working-class leader who inspired both great hatred and deep affection. The author creates a richly detailed portrait of an extraordinary place, the great mining town of Broken Hill, during extraordinary times, the First World War, the gravest crisis the world had ever known’.
— Frank Bongiorno

‘It is an extraordinary oversight that this man, with such a crucial role in state, labour and local politics, should have been overlooked for so long’.
—Erik Eklund

‘This is a book that should be read by all Australians interested in their nation’s history’.
—David Day

Dr Paul Robert Adams was born in Broken Hill.
He holds a PhD from The University of Sydney and currently teaches media at The University of New England.

CoverBrookfield
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