Union Belle

by Deborah Challinor

  Ellen nodded; she’d expected that he would. The central council included union officials from each of the seven local underground mines, and it would be mainly their wives serving on the women’s auxiliary.

  She pulled the plug out of the sink and reached for a tea towel. ‘Will you be on the relief committee?’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘When’s your first meeting, then?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon, town hall at two.’

  Ellen didn’t bother asking whether the women were invited, because they never were. ‘Well, find out what you can about what we’re going to need to do. Who else’s name was put forward?’

  ‘Milly, and Rhea Wickham, and Lorna Anscombe, for the Puke auxiliary. Not sure about the women from the other mines.’

  ‘Dot?’

  ‘No, Bert thinks she’ll have enough on her hands.’

  What he meant, and they both knew it, was that Bert was worried about Dot’s mental health. She didn’t manage well in a crisis, and had a difficult enough time looking after her kids as it was, so asking her to serve on a committee when the pressure was on was out of the question.

  ‘Probably for the best,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Bert thinks so.’

  Bert Sisley loved being a coalminer, and he delighted in his five young children, but above all he adored his wife and was very protective of what he termed her ‘delicate nerves’. She’d been a bright and pretty girl when Bert had started courting her just before the war, and they’d married a few months before Ellen and Tom. They’d seemed a blessed couple, but then their first child had arrived and suddenly everything had changed.

  Marrying a decent man and having a family had been all that Dot had ever wanted out of life. Along with various household items for her glory box, she had quietly collected the things she would need for a new family—tiny knitted baby clothes, packets of nappies, a bassinet set—and when she fell pregnant only a few months after she and Bert were wed, they were both thrilled. The pregnancy was uneventful, and watched with enthusiastic anticipation by the rest of the community, but when Ellen visited Dot in the maternity home soon after the baby arrived, it was clear that something had gone horribly wrong.

  Instead of the radiant young mother Ellen had anticipated seeing, Dot was curled up on her bed, white-faced and silent. She seemed unable to respond to anything Ellen said to her, and when the nurse brought her new daughter in for feeding, Dot had reluctantly taken the infant onto her lap, looked at her briefly, then burst into hysterical tears and thrust the baby back at the nurse.

  Pregnant herself at the time, Ellen had been thoroughly shocked by Dot’s behaviour. So had poor Bert, who had never in his worst nightmares imagined that his wife would reject their first child, whose name he’d had to choose by himself: April, for the month of her birth. He told Ellen after her first visit that the doctor said it wasn’t unheard of, and that it should just be a matter of time until Dot became accustomed to being a mother, but that he’d also warned that things could be a little rough until she did.

  And it had been rough. Dot had done her best, but it was almost a year before she managed to struggle out of her severe depression, and by then she was pregnant again. She gave birth to twins, and this time spent six months in Waikato Hospital, much of it in the psychiatric ward. The babies were kept with her, as the doctors believed it would be best for them, but when Dot finally came home she was a changed woman: still pretty, and still the love of her husband’s life, but with something vital missing from her spirit. Bert and his mother had cared for April, but with the arrival home of the next two babies he was almost at his wits’ end.

  But they managed, with the help of family and neighbours, including Ellen, and life seemed to have resumed on an even keel when Dot found herself pregnant again. Some observers noted at that point that as the Sisleys weren’t Catholic they must simply be out and out careless, but no one ever said this to Bert or Dot.

  It was twins again, which was a mystery because there was no history of twins on either side of the family, but this time Dot was fine with the new babies. It was a huge relief to both her and Bert, but the whole experience of motherhood had robbed her of her self-confidence and left her nerves in a permanently tattered state. She had learned to love all her children, but even so still succumbed to intense and very black depressions from time to time. Ellen wondered if the trauma of the first three babies had affected her mind permanently. Women did occasionally abandon their children, she knew that, but she thought it must be so much worse when it wasn’t through choice—when a mother wanted to love her babies but simply couldn’t. There had been no more pregnancies for Dot since, thank God, but if she’d had some sort of medical procedure to prevent it during her last stay in the hospital, she never talked about it.

  The children were all quite young and still a handful for Dot, and it was no surprise that Bert went out of his way to protect her from any unnecessary stress. Ellen knew Bert had thought long and hard about going on strike, but in the end his principles and loyalty to the union had won and he’d voted to go out, despite what it might do to his family. Tom hadn’t even been critical of him for wavering. Privately, Ellen believed Bert hadn’t actually had much choice—you just couldn’t be a union delegate and on the committee and vote against striking.

  She hoped Bert wouldn’t live to regret his decision. She hoped none of them would.

  THREE

  Ellen put her cup down and touched a serviette to the corners of her mouth to collect any stray jam or cream from her scone. They were in the polish-scented sitting room of Rhea Wickham’s house halfway down Joseph Street, four of them—Milly, herself, Rhea and Lorna Anscombe—meeting to discuss their contribution to the Huntly Women’s Auxiliary.

  Rhea, Pat Wickham’s wife, was a big woman, in her fifties and quite formidable with greying hair swept back off a face that was still handsome, and large breasts that formed a single, solid shelf. As hostess, she was smartly dressed and wearing a marcasite brooch that matched her earrings, and Ellen was glad she had bothered to change out of her shorts and blouse before she’d come out.

  The obligatory cup of tea out of the way, it was time to get down to business. Ellen knew this because Rhea had produced an exercise book and a pencil, and was waiting expectantly for Milly and Lorna to stop chatting. When they had, she began.

  ‘As you know, ladies,’ she said in her rather deep voice, ‘we are in the midst of an extremely serious strike.’

  Ellen couldn’t be sure, but she thought Milly might be working hard to suppress a giggle. Rhea Wickham was president of the local branch of the Country Women’s Institute and a respected and influential woman in her own right, but her bearing and rather formal approach to everything she did could be daunting, and occasionally not entirely warranted. The strike was a serious matter, certainly, but there was probably no need to state it like Michael Savage announcing that war had been declared against Germany.

  ‘Therefore,’ Rhea went on, ‘we must make arrangements to ensure that every striking family has food and anything else that might be needed. Money will soon become tight in many households,’ she added unnecessarily.

  Lorna, Milly and Ellen all nodded; the men had only been out for ten days and already the Friday pay packets were sorely missed.

  ‘As discussed at the meeting in town on Monday, the men are making arrangements to buy vegetables in bulk from the market gardens at Pukekohe, and anywhere else we can find a decent supply. The produce will be collected by truck and brought back to be distributed.’ She looked up. ‘That, ladies, is where we will come in. The goods will be given out on Tuesdays from the town hall for the Huntly miners, from the club at Glen Afton, the hall here at Pukemiro and so on, along with any meat we can obtain. We, and the women from the other branch auxiliaries, will be required to man those distribution centres.’

  Ellen knew all this, and so no doubt did Lorna and Milly; their husbands had also been at the Monday meeting.

 
‘And there will be plenty of other work, too.’ Rhea paused, as if searching for the right words. ‘During previous strikes, especially those of longer duration, some…well, no, lets be honest, ladies, a lot of men came under pressure from their wives to go back to work.’ She peered over the top of her spectacles. ‘Now, I know what you’re all going to say, and I’m not advocating that we go around all the wives in Pukemiro bullying them into standing firm behind their husbands. That’s the sort of tactic the government is so fond of, and we won’t stoop to that level. I’ve raised a family myself during troubled times, and I know what it’s like to worry day and night about how on earth to feed them when the cupboards are almost empty, what to do about the mortgage and how to pay the doctor when someone gets sick. It’s hard, it really is, but of all the women in this town, you must know what’s at stake.’

  They all did, even Milly. When the Tory government had come to power in 1949, Holland had vowed to crush the nation’s militant trade unions. The Auckland wharfies’ latest industrial action was a direct and deliberate challenge to Holland, and the day of reckoning had finally arrived, but failure of the miners’ unions around the country to stand strong would seriously weaken the watersiders’ position.

  There was also the matter of the emergency regulations, which Ellen believed should have had every decent New Zealander up in arms, regardless of whether they had any personal affiliation to, or sympathy for, the trade union movement.

  The government now had unlimited powers, and funds, to counteract strikers and their unions’ activities. Striking, or encouraging a strike in any way, was a serious offence, as were pickets and marches, addresses at public meetings by the WWU, and printing or distributing strike-related material. For any of these you could go to jail. And the police could enter any premises to enforce the regulations. To make matters worse, the Minister of Labour, Bill Sullivan, could appropriate the funds and records of any striking union at will. Therefore strikers and their families could be starved back to work, and their homes could be invaded by the police without warning or permission at any time of the day or night. New Zealand had apparently suddenly become a totalitarian state.

  Ellen knew that the unions would get around the regulations one way or another, but the fact they had been brought in at all shook her to the core, and she knew she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. This was New Zealand, for God’s sake, not Nazi Germany.

  ‘Where will our meat come from?’ Lorna asked.

  ‘We’ll buy some in,’ Rhea replied, ‘despite nobody being allowed to sell it to us, and we’ve already had offers from local farmers, providing we organise the butchering ourselves. Has anyone been to the shops?’

  She was asking had anyone been forced to enquire about credit yet, but was too polite to say this openly.

  There was a brief silence, then Milly said, ‘Well, I haven’t, but I was talking to Shirley Minogue this morning and she said she’d asked for credit at Huntly Pharmacy and at Newton King, and got it straight away, no questions asked.’

  Lorna spoke up. ‘Our HP at Farmers’ comes due next Wednesday and, well, we haven’t got the money, so I went in and explained and the clerk said not to worry about it for now. He just made a note that I’d been in.’

  ‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it?’ Rhea said. ‘I knew we’d be able to rely on the local businesses to help us out.’

  Ellen had a cynical thought: if shopkeepers in and around Huntly didn’t extend credit during the strike, when the men finally did go back to work their wives in retaliation would take their custom somewhere else, and in a town built on coal it would be commercial suicide to alienate the miners. But Huntly was a close-knit community and support for the strikers was strong, so a lot of shopkeepers and businessmen would help out where they could anyway. This was a relief, because the payment on her refrigerator was due soon and she wasn’t sure she could come up with the money. She and Tom had a little put aside, but she didn’t want to have to touch that yet.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said to Lorna, ‘I’ll have to pay a visit to Farmers’ myself. You probably weren’t the first and I’m pretty sure you won’t be the last.’

  ‘But that’s exactly the problem,’ Rhea said. She removed her spectacles and let them fall on their fancy chain against her chest. ‘The shame of having to ask for credit can do awful things to a family. They say it’s a man’s pride that suffers the most, but it’s not easy for a woman either, having to go into the grocer’s week after week charging up food and what have you, knowing that the bill is growing every time she steps through the door. It’s humiliating and a terrible thing for the spirit.’

  Lorna, Milly and Ellen stared.

  Rhea stared back. ‘It is, and I should know. Pat and I almost went to the wall in the strike of ‘26, and it took us a very long time to get back on our feet afterwards. We had nothing to fall back on. But the money wasn’t the worst of it, it was what it did to us, as man and wife. It was a terrible strain.’

  Nobody knew what to say.

  Rhea flapped her hand. ‘Oh, we came right, but the men don’t think of that side of it when they’re voting to go out. They don’t, you know. This strike could go on for quite a while and if it does, marriages in this town will come under a huge strain, you mark my words. And that’s when the trouble will really start. Children miss out and then wives start to blame their husbands. Oh, they won’t to begin with, and they won’t be proud of themselves when they do, but after a month or so of not enough food or money they’ll start hinting about it, then accusing, then demanding. It’s human nature—a mother has to take care of her children.’

  The three young mothers in the room looked at each other uneasily, knowing that Rhea was right.

  ‘And if that happens,’ she continued, ‘then at least some of the men will give way. They’re bound to. And if the miners fall, the other unions will too, and, in the end, so will the watersiders.’

  Milly looked as if she wanted to say something; Ellen watched her open her mouth, then shut it again and frown.

  ‘I know that would be bad, but exactly how bad?’ she asked eventually. ‘I mean, the watersiders might have to go back to work with less money than they wanted, but it’s their pay rise, not ours. We’re only out in support, aren’t we?’

  Rhea nodded. ‘You’re right, Milly, we are. But we’re not just supporting the watersiders, we’re fighting for the right of New Zealanders to belong to trade unions with enough power to make a difference. If we lose this one, it could be the end of all that.’

  ‘Not of unions altogether?’ Milly was startled.

  ‘Of militant unions, perhaps. Oh, not tomorrow, probably not even next year, but eventually. If the government wins this time, it will keep on winning until there’s nothing left of the unions worth having. The men—our men—can say goodbye to being able to negotiate decent pay rates, and to fair management, and probably even to safe working conditions. How are you going to feel when your sons leave school to go underground, and don’t come back up one day because the union hasn’t had the clout to make working in the mines safe?’

  Ellen thought this was a mean shot, as all three of them had young sons, but she fully understood the reasoning behind Rhea’s words, even if they were a bit over the top. ‘I know it sounds dramatic,’ she said, in support of Rhea’s little speech, ‘but it could even be the end of true democracy, if the Tories are allowed to get away with bringing in emergency regulations every time something slightly out of the ordinary happens.’

  ‘You sound just like your father,’ Lorna said, surprised.

  Ellen was surprised herself. Alf never rammed his beliefs about trade unions down other people’s throats, but he certainly made them public and he never minced his words. She was more inclined to keep her opinions to herself, although she had never made a secret of her support for the Puke miners’ union and for trade unions in general, and it startled her to think that she might be starting to sound militant. She wasn’t militant at
all; she simply believed in sticking to her principles.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean to sound all bolshie.’

  ‘Well, why not?’ Lorna said. ‘You wouldn’t be the only communist in town.’

  Rhea clapped her hands together briskly. ‘So, if we can get back on track, as well as the relief side of things we need to be able to offer support to the women of this town when the time comes. The enemy is at our gate, ladies, and we have to be prepared to go into battle.’

  Rhea had been in the Women’s War Service Auxiliary during the war, and it showed.

  ‘Whew,’ Milly said as they were walking up the street after the meeting. She wiped imaginary sweat off her brow. ‘I thought we were only getting together to talk about recipes for turning half a pound of mince into ten nutritious meals, not planning a raid on Hitler’s bunker.’

  Ellen laughed. ‘Well, you know Rhea, she never does anything by half. And you must admit she’s very good at organising things.’

  They trudged on up the hill in silence until Milly asked, ‘Will we really have to go around telling women not to nag their husbands back to work? I don’t think I really want to do that, Ellen—we could make ourselves very unpopular.’

  ‘We could, yes, if we went at it like a bull at a gate. But I think what Rhea meant is that we should just suggest that staying out will do more good in the long run than going back too early. She wasn’t saying we should pressure anyone. At least, I don’t think she was.’

  Milly looked at Ellen sideways. ‘What did she mean about our boys being unsafe down the mine? I thought that was a bit below the belt.’

  Ellen came to a halt and turned to face her friend. ‘So did I, but what if she was right? Billy and Evan will probably go on the coal when they leave school, won’t they? And so will Neil and Davey.’

  Milly nodded resignedly. ‘I expect so.’

  Like many miners’ wives, she didn’t want her sons down the mine at all, she wanted them in nice, safe, clean jobs. But digging coal was where the money was, in this part of the country anyway, so down the mine they would probably go.