Nick D – When the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) government crumbled in the face of Japan's military offensive in Southeast Asia, moves were made to evacuate the colonial regime. A month after General ter Poorten surrendered unconditionally to the Japanese Commander in-Chief on 8 March 1942, the NEI Commission was established in Australia to set up a colonial government in exile.
As part of this process, the Dutch colonists evacuated "Tanah Merah" – a concentration camp established in Boven Digoel, Papua. Travelling by ship to Sydney via Bowen in Far North Queensland, 295 Indonesian political prisoners and their families – 507 in total – were imprisoned in two internment camps in Cowra and Liverpool, New South Wales (NSW).
Many of these 295 political prisoners were hardened revolutionaries. Held in Boven Digoel for well over 15 years, some were veterans of the 1926 uprising against Dutch colonial rule and members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). By the end of 1943, the Tanah Merah exiles were released. Leaving Cowra and Liverpool, they went straight into agitating and organising among Indonesians in Australia, setting up Indonesian Independence Committees across the country, with the Central Committee in Brisbane.
Merdeka!
On 17 August 1945, a group of Indonesians were monitoring Batavia Radio in the Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo where they heard the Indonesian Declaration of Independence. The Dutch Government refused to recognise the newly established Republic of Indonesia (RI) and planned to reclaim its old colony. By September, to resist the return of the Dutch, a plan to paralyse all Dutch shipping in Australian ports had been finalised. While Indonesian sailors would refuse duty and abandon the ships, Australian workers would declare all Dutch ships "black" and boycott them.
The first boycott action took place in Brisbane on 24 September. After 1,000 members of the Brisbane Branch of the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) voted to support the black bans, the union announced:
"To assist the Dutch in any way is to assist avaricious Dutch Imperialism against Indonesian democracy. The workers of Australia are solidly in support of Indonesian workers. Gaol and worse fail to frighten the people of Indonesia. We must demand that the people of Indonesia be allowed to select their own Government. Keep out the Dutch Imperialists! Long Live Freedom!"
After starting in Brisbane, black bans were soon in place in Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle. Over 30 Australian trade unions joined the campaign, with the WWF and the Seamen's Union – led by members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) – playing a central role. A flyer from the NSW Trades and Labor Council (TLC) declared:
"Dutch soldiers and officers should not get transport. No Dutch munitions should be touched. Repairs on Dutch planes, ships, etc., must not be done. Dutch ships must not get coal. Tugs must not be made available to the Dutch ships. Food, stores, etc., must not be provided to Dutch ships, offices, canteens or personnel. Dutch officers and seamen should not be taken to and from ships. In fact everything Dutch is black... Boycott them!"
From September 1945, 559 vessels and 1,000 land crafts came under union boycott in Australia and were prevented or delayed from reaching Indonesia. Actions against Dutch shipping also followed, to varying degrees, in the United States, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, New Zealand, Singapore, India, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Thailand, Canada, China and the Philippines.
The ban was also supported by Indian, Malay, Vietnamese and Chinese maritime workers in Australia, with the Chinese Seamen's Union in Australia, Indonesian Seamen's Union in Australia, Indian Seamen's Union in Australia and the Malayan Merchant Navy Association all joining the boycott. The Secretary of the Malayan Merchant Navy Association declared, "we support Indonesian independence and will not help the Dutch to suppress the Indonesian nationalists."
At one point, the Dutch flew in workers from India to rescue their 'Black Armada'. However, they too were soon on strike in solidarity with the Indonesian national revolution. Historian Rupert Lockwood, author of Black Armada: Australia & the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1942-49 explains, "when they discovered they were to sail Dutch war-supply ships under boycott by Australian trade unionists and Indonesian seamen, these men... began to join the battle for the Indonesian Republic on the waterfronts of Australia".
Battle on the waterfronts of Australia
The blockade was attacked after it began in September 1945, particularly from the media, Dutch colonists, British Southeast Asia Command (SEAC) and Australian Labor Party (ALP) governments at both state and federal level. Leader of the conservative Country-Liberal Party Robert Menzies labelled it an "attempt by communists in the Waterside Workers Federation to intervene in the domestic affairs of another country, namely, the Netherlands East Indies".
After supporting the first phase of the black bans, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and state labour councils also pushed for its end. In March 1946, Assistant Secretary of the WWF again repeated the condition for the ban's lifting: approval from the Premier of the Indonesian Republic, Sutan Sjahrir. A few months later, in July 1946, the final Dutch ships were able to depart. For nine months, they sat idle in Sydney and Brisbane, abandoned by their Indonesian crews under strict boycott by Australian unions.
With the bans preventing or seriously hampering Dutch supplies and war materials reaching Indonesia, Sukarno called them, "a magnificent, freedom loving stand" and the Central All-Indonesian Workers Organisation (Sentral Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia, SOBSI), "a deed of historic importance and an example to the world". Until the final Dutch ships ambled out of Australian waters, only a slow trickle of vessels were able to escape. Only by using skeleton crews, made up mainly of soldiers, Dutch crews were – at great risk – able to move these ships.
By 1947, the blockade on merchant vessels carrying foodstuffs, clothing and medicines was eased by waterfront and maritime unions but bans remained on all Dutch military cargo or "materials useful for war". However, when the First Police Action (a major military offensive) was launched against the Republic of Indonesia in August 1947, black bans were again imposed on all Dutch ships. Further bans were imposed when the Second Police Action was launched in late 1948.
Internationalism today
The black bans created serious problems for the Dutch, hampering their efforts at recolonisation and strengthening the Republic's position. Militarily, Lockwood estimates, "the Netherlands armed forces... had no chance of immediate or effective offensives against the Republic without the 450 barges, lighters, and surfboats and the fuel transport craft held in the hammerlock of the Australian boycott".
Since the end of World War Two, the division between exploiter countries like Australia and exploited nations like Indonesia has grown even greater. Today, the 1945-1949 Black Armada actions are a striking example of anti-imperialist consciousness and internationalist solidarity. For the imperialist ruling class, whose ability to exploit the Global South and extract enormous super-profits relies on the non-recognition or ignorance of Global North workers, rebuilding this type of 'consciousness in oppressor countries like Australia will pose a massive threat.
Source: https://red-ant.org/2024/09/24/when-the-australian-waterfront-stood-with-indonesia