Friends & Enemies

Unlike many films about union history, Friends & Enemies (1987) is not a retrospective account. It was made as a ‘fly on the wall documentary’ – told as it unfolded from day to day, week to week, month to month. 

In February 1985, the South East Queensland Electricity Board (SEQEB) laid off nearly 1,000 permanent staff (mainly linesmen) and replaced them with contractors. The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) launched immediate industrial action involving rolling blackouts as workers cut electricity services to pressure SEQEB and the government. The dispute quickly escalated.  Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s response was severe and swift. He declared a state of emergency, introduced legislation that essentially criminalised the strike, suspended union leaders, and took away the striking workers’ legal protections. SEQEB employees who refused to return to work were permanently dismissed, and their positions were filled by non-union workers (‘scabs’).

Here was an attack on unionism unprecedented in this country. The New Right was on the march and Bjelke-Peterson was its champion. I considered the dispute to have massive historical importance. The stakes were incredibly high for both sides. I had just completed Kemira – Diary of a Strike (1984), on the basis of which I received a fellowship from the Australian Film Commission which consisted of a budget for a feature documentary. It gave me the freedom to start shooting whenever I pleased.

I arrived in Brisbane not long after the blackouts started. I headed for Dan O’Neill’s place, one of the key local activists. He gave me the lowdown. It felt like a war was going on. Paris ‘68 – but Brisbane style. The next day I walked into the office of the ETU and asked them for permission for access to film. They appreciated the enormity and historical significance of this dispute, and allowed me in. The next day I was on a picket line where I met the person who turned out to be my main character – Bernie Neville.

I had embedded myself with the union, but I was also keen to follow the government’s conduct of the strike, hopefully by getting access to Bjelke-Petersen’s inner circle. That turned out to be impossible, so I approached my journalist friend Quentin Dempster. He suggested the Minister for Industrial Affairs, Vince Lester, who was the public face of the government running the dispute. This turned out to be a great suggestion. I had no problem getting access to Lester. He knew he was on the winning side, and he just loved the camera. His arrogance and contempt for the strikers really got to me. 

I commuted from Sydney to Brisbane every few weeks. I spent time in the union office with the rank-and-file committee, filming pickets, demonstrations, and visiting families. Then, I would suddenly be switching gear and filming National Party fundraisers and tea parties. Literally switching gear! I had a formal suit and pants in the crew car just in case I needed it. Lester even invited me on a trip to his electorate in Emerald to film a Debutante Ball. We were to go on the Premier’s private jet. Could I refuse! But this was the very night that Bjelke-Petersen was going be awarded his doctorate. I couldn’t be in both places at once, so I made sure I had two crews – one at the Deb Ball, and the other at the University covering the expected crowd of protestors – students, activists and the sacked SEQEB workers including my key protagonist Bernie Neville. The two scenes were intercut in the final film – which is what I’d originally had in mind when I hired the other crew.   

Those years in Brisbane were marked by incredible polarisations – political divisions not only between the National Party and Labor Party, but within the trade union movement and the Left. (This inspired the title, by the way.) As time went on, I witnessed an increasing sense of desperation within the union ranks to the point where the dispute started to turn in on itself –  something I wasn’t expecting. The strike committee was becoming more and more embittered, losing faith in their own union officials, the Trades and Labour Council (TLC) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). These peak bodies were calling the shots and not involving the rank-and-file. There was a sense of powerlessness that was infecting not only the men, but their partners and families as well. 

I could have stopped filming there and then, but I decided to keep going – to show how the rank-and-file and their supporters were keeping the struggle alive through flying pickets, staging ‘illegal’ marches, confronting the TLC, and then finally how the women came to the fore when morale was ebbing low. They had nothing to lose.

In the editing I wanted to ensure a nuanced view of the film’s political actors, but my personal sympathies were always with the sacked workers and their families. It was the ever-present Bernie Neville who for me was the conscience of the dispute. He took centre stage.

In the end I wanted the film to speak for itself and leave audiences to draw their own conclusions. At the same time, I wanted the film to ignite debate – to raise questions about how unions respond to these kinds of challenges, and what can be learnt from these experiences. How could it all have happened differently? In that respect I believe the film succeeded. But it also made a lot of people very angry. The launch of the film in Brisbane at the University of Queensland’s Schonell Theatre was a near riot. Debate raged in the audience at the Q&A about what people didn’t do, or could have done better. It got quite personal, and the ETU officials especially came under fire.

John Hughes recounts some of the fallout that followed the screening: 

The film enraged certain ETU executives who felt exposed by the depiction of their complicity in siding with the political interests of the ACTU and the ALP in defence of the Accord and against the wishes of the rank and file…Certain Queensland trade unions’ hostility to Zubrycki’s documentary practice was to have its consequences.¹

What Hughes refers to here is my aborted Amongst Equals – a documentary about the history of the trade union movement in Australia produced by Film Australia. The ACTU, which originally commissioned the film, denied approval of the rough cut and rejected any attempt at a resolution. I released the film ‘illegally’ in 1989, and it remains a cause celebre.

In 2022 the Brisbane Historical Association re-screened Friends & Enemies in a downtown Brisbane cinema. An ETU official was present at the Q&A, telling the audience that the documentary had for many years been ignored, but was now being used in internal union training because it taught valuable lessons about the way the dispute was mis-managed by the union. I felt vindicated that I’d made a film that told a story which was proving useful and constructive 36 years after it was made.

Australian filmmaker and academic Debra Beattie writes: 

I would argue strongly that Zubrycki’s film, in its portrayal of struggle against a crucial neoliberal offensive, is a useful reminder of how workers and their unions should respond to the challenge facing us…In showing the suffering and despair of the workers and their families, Zubrycki is like the Angel of History in Benjamin’s great mediation on the Paul Klee painting.²

Friends & Enemies (1987 Australia 89 mins)

Prod Co: Jotz Productions Prod, Dir, Scr: Tom Zubrycki Phot: Fabio Cavadini, Larry Zetlin Ed: Les McLaren Mus: Paul Charlier

Cast: Bernie Neville, Vince Lester

Endnotes