Brian Thomas Manning

Brian Manning (born December 25, 1932 in Mundubbera , Queensland , Australia , † November 3, 2013 ), full name Brian Thomas Manning was an Australian trade unionist and political activist.

Career

Manning's parents were farmers. When the war broke out, the father joined the army. In 1941 the mother moved to Brisbane with Brian and his four younger siblings . One night the mother suffered a miscarriage. Nine-year-old Brian then had to bury the fetus . The mother was hospitalized and Brian looked after his siblings alone for seven weeks before the authorities found out about the case. At the age of 16, Brian left Brisbane State High School at the urging of his father and took on a variety of jobs: clerk, shop assistant, and construction worker. Each of these jobs ensured in some way that he was politically radicalized. While he got on well with his mother, whose musical talent he inherited, there were repeated conflicts with his father, who was often violent when he was drunk. After a heated argument, Brian Manning moved from home and returned to his native Mundubbera. Here he founded a dance music band with his older half-sister Magaret and a cousin. Manning later decided to start a dance school, which became so popular that the local council offered him a larger space to accommodate all of his students. During this time he had his first child with Linda.

Manning moved to Darwin in 1956 , where he worked as a carpenter for the labor exchange, security guard, airport firefighter , manager of the workers' association and in the port. Three years after arriving in Darwin, he joined the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Other communists also lived in his house, so it was popularly called "the Kremlin ". Manning and his colleagues wanted to steer the party's focus away from the shipyard workers in Darwin and onto other issues. One of them was the “Stay Put Malayans incident”. In 1961, three Malaysian guest workers were threatened with deportation after they had lost their jobs. With the assistance of Jim Bowditch, editor of NT News , and the CPA, Manning and others formed an anti-deportation committee that hid the men and raised their case across the country. The government gave in and the men were allowed to stay in the country.

During this time Manning established close contacts with politically active Aborigines . Together they founded the Northern Territory Council for Aboriginal Rights (NTCAR). Manning became assistant secretary at NTCAR . The NTCAR urged the North Australian Workers' Union (NAWU) to enforce equal pay for indigenous workers. In August 1966, 200 Gurindji cattle herders and domestic workers went on strike . Vincent Lingiari led the Gurindji strike against Vestey Group's employers . Manning got into his Bedford truck and brought three tons of food to the strikers. The vehicle is now in the National Museum of Australia .

When Manning took a job as a dock worker, he became secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia , later the branch of the Waterside Workers' Federation of Australia (WWF). He gave Aborigines access to jobs at the port through the union and ensured, through the influence of the WWF, that products from the Vestey Group were boycotted by retailers. Manning became a central figure in Northern Territory political life in the early 1970s.

In September 1974, at the suggestion of Denis Freney , Manning visited Portuguese Timor for the first time and was enthusiastic about its path to independence, as propagated by the left-wing FRETILIN . In 1975 he traveled a second time to the Portuguese colony, where he was supposed to help set up a union. The brief civil war destroyed the plans. Inspired by Denis Freney, Manning helped the left-wing FRETILIN set up a radio station in order to be able to communicate between members at home and abroad. Radio Maetze became even more important when the Indonesians occupied East Timor and the FRETILIN went into guerrilla warfare. Reports on defensive fighting, propaganda and coded messages were read out on the transmitter. It also kept in contact with East Timorese activists in Australia and their Australian helpers, such as Manning, Chris Elenor and Robert Wesley-Smith . It was broadcast in English , Portuguese and Tetum . The broadcasts received in Australia were recorded and the information disseminated. Reception was legal, but there was no license for retransmission. After the Indonesian invasion, Manning also persuaded the port workers in Darwin to refuse to load and unload cargo from Indonesian ships in protest.

Manning's other political issues were Vietnam , West Papua , Palestine , the Green Ban movement of the Builders Laborers' Federation , the rejection of uranium exports via Australian ports and many others. After retiring as a dock worker in 2002, he remained active in the union movement until the end of his life. He was a co-founder of the NT Trades and Labor Council and a member of the inquiry committee that processed compensation claims for workers from the Northern Territory in 1984.

Manning died in 2013, leaving behind his children Linda, Brian, Louisa and Jon and his grandchildren. His daughter Sandra had died before him.

Awards

On August 27, 2014, Manning was posthumously awarded the Collar des Ordem de Timor-Leste by President Taur Matan Ruak in recognition of his commitment to the independence of East Timor. Manning's daughter Lolita received the medal.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Julie Kimber and Charlie Ward, Red Flag: Brian Manning, a fighter for justice . November 20, 2013 , accessed November 16, 2019.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Brian Manning , November 13, 2013 , accessed November 16, 2019.
3. ^ National Museum of Australia: Bedford truck acquisition , August 8, 2016 , accessed November 16, 2019.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Tempo Semanal Sabadu: Estado TL condecorados Membros da Solidaridade no dia 30 de Agosto de 2014 , 30 August 2014 , accessed on TIMOR CONDECORA on 30 August 2014.
5. ^ ABC Canberra, February 17, 2011, Treasure Trove: Radio for the people of East Timor
6. ↑ "Part 3: The History of the Conflict" (PDF; 1.4 MB) from the "Chega!" Report of the CAVR (English)
7. ^ National Film & Sound Archive Australia: Radio Mauchte ( Memento from April 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
8. ↑ Decreto do Presidente da República n ° 25/2014 de 27 de Agosto , accessed on September 18, 2019.