Tom Fox: A forgotten Lumper

Tom Fox, Ballarat footy player, Fremantle Lumpers Unionist.

Freo today is full of overly expensive cafes and gentrified hipsters but back in the day the cafe’s were nice and it was full of actual hippies. But before even then it was a rough town of shady characters and and still that pleasant breeze.

To put it how Xiavier Herbert did, the “...wine bars, pubs, hash-houses, wash-houses, Whore-houses, doss-houses, were run by people of all breeds.” One thing you can say about Fremantle that you can’t say about Most people under the age of 35 is that it had a lot of houses.

Although containing respectable elements, Freo was a port town, full of port labourers, known as lumpers. Lots of lumpers worked non-stop with boxes of cargo, which are modern day lootboxes, with the main difference being you knew what was in it and were guaranteed not to have it. 

These Lumpers were the main ones responsible for unloading cargo in and out of the port. There were enough that the Union Books recorded 2000 members on a good day, though it also dwindled to as low as 800 in the bad years when people couldn’t afford their dues.

As with many important jobs that require general labor it was casual and insecure, being quite literally dependent on the tides and whims of the wind. Conflict occurred with employers regularly, which gives these guys more balls than Half Life's Gman, an entity that would happily see men put in stasis and technically kidnap minors if it pleased the interest of his ‘employers’. 

When ships became visible over the horizon, Lumping men would assemble At the pick-up point on Cliff Street. Said Lumpers had a certain look about them, much like the effeminate residents that will occupy their workplace in the future they wrapped string around their legs to form bowyangs. Alongside that came sweat rags, billy-cans for tea and sugar bags holding lunch. Come to think of it there was very little describable difference between a Fremantle Port labourer and an upper class brothel.

When they returned from their ventures they often polluted other passengers on the trams. Why were they so filthy? Because they dealt with every single form of olden day micro-plastics under the sun. 

Coal was the most visible dust, leaving black grime everywhere. Other contamination was also present. 

Lime was one, though unfortunately not the fruit as I am sure the lumpers spent every day on the edge of scurvy.

 Cement was another solid addition of filth.

 blood manure was bloody hard to cart around.

 Sulphur was hell as well, and it was not easy under Manganesey.

 Plaster, Pig Iron (luckily without the bob).

 ammonia which would not be exposed to fremantle citizens again until the rise of piss fetishes in the 2010s, wet hides to which the previous also applies.

 Lead Bullion which people go mad for, Ore Ballast, carbolic powder,

 And coke in the time before meth and also coke, Broken Glass, and liquid acid also in the time before coke and before acid. 

Needless to say, it was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.

This wasn’t low-skill labour, I honestly don't believe in that term. Those jobs often called “low-skill” require many skills that people have so familiarised that it feels like it isn’t worth anyone's time. Tell that to the next job application that requires 15 years of experience before starting. Guaranteed job, totally.

Waterside workers needed a lot of strength and dexterity to get the job done, and manage hundreds of non-standardised cargo like it's a three dimensional 100 piece real Lego Tetris set.

In 1928,  400 serious enough accidents occurred. That is so high that even that middle aged tradie that complains about how safety rules have changed would probably look at the conditions of Freo lumpers and go “where the hell is the safety bloke? I’m reporting this.”

When people were injured, and as shown above it was both very often and almost certainly a loony toons inspiration waiting to happen, those workers were set aside, and another took their place. 

Plus Diseases in the early 20th century were something worse. I will tell you that much. Remember in the times before Covid when we would make jokes about the Bubonic plague instead? That stuff killed like half the world. Lumpers had to deal with mediaeval ruby princesses that instead of having a cargo of old rich people contained barrels and barrels of disease ridden goods.

Lumpers had to present themselves for selection by assembling in what was known as “the bull ring” in which the foreman chose the people out of that ring they wanted like it's selecting your team for a school sports game, literally pointing at the person and going “you, you, you” just a hand of god about whether you will get paid that day, except unlike god their partiality was much more explicit as these often labelled “pannikin bosses'' picked their personal favourites. And when has God ever done that?

How did you often become the personal favourite of a foreman? Beer. 100 years before then and on the other side of the continent they had a rum economy. It seems such a tradition did not die out until…well ever I suppose. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the backroom deals in Australia are still made with cartons of Export or Victoria Bitters. The other, less spoken Australian sin that these corrupt foremen  were accused of is infidelity, as although a bit harder to believe some say men secured their right to work by telling the boss their wife's bedroom door was open that night...

If only where was an institution designed to combat such unbalanced workplace agreements so that negotiations could happen on more even ground. What if we had all the workers get together and talk about what they could collectively do about their situation, in some kind of…workplace union or something…

Enter the Lumpers union, and its head, none other than THE Tom Fox. 

Fabled champion some say he was. 

This supposedly excellent footy player decided to head west to seek better fortune, which his footy club, in an attempt to get him to stay and keep kicking literal goals instead of metaphorical ones, offered him a job as a journalist.

Fox rejected that prospect, however, and with his close friend of a less memorable name Jim Bourke, arrived in the superior state at the turn of the century, getting his Kalgoorlie's donkey ass of a satellite town: Boulder. 

I always give old Kal some heat, but that is a bashing of love I swear. It's a seriously interesting place and played important roles in state and federal history. Arguably played a very important international role as well when you consider American President Herbert Hoover made much of his wealth in the town. Her satellite town of Boulder however, is not a place even bolder men would trek. God knows why Fox not only moved there, but had a Son there. I mean that's coming from me and I was born in Port Hedland. Like at least it wasn’t South Hedland man for fecks sake. 

At Boulder Fox damaged his legs in a mining accident which on reflection is a terrible irony for a footy player. God I would love to see footy being played at the paralympics, just 18 Franklin Roosevelt wheeling around on converted cricket grounds like “kick it over to me jeremy come on” [try get a skit for this done]

Anyway after “the incident” he and his family moved to Freo in 1920. Due to being one of the only non-specialist jobs around at the time, old mate Foxy decided to become a lumper. Within the lumpers union he rose up the hierarchy. 

His main cited talents according to Patsy Sharp includes eloquence and negotiating genius, a very important and rare skill to have in a new style union.

All accounts of him are positive. One such story even has it that when he got his boots fixed he saw a man on the train coming back with terrible footwear and decided to give away his freshly cobbled ones to him. 

His one weird kink though was that he would quite poetically carry around a deck of cards and play against himself in bridge as a means of de-stressing. Whether he is going home or on the train to the eastern states. Didn’t matter. 

Fox became president of the Union following W. Renton, a man involved in the infamous and ferocious Lumpers strike of 1919 which I never heard of until now. 

Essentially the strike of 1919 led to a riot and the accidental death of a unionist named Tom Edwards after he was hit with a Police Baton. Renten, as President of the lumpers union rode a white stallion to clear a path for a humiliated Premier Hal Colbatch who resigned as premier shortly after as a result of the criticism of his handling the crisis. A statue of Edwards was built by the same guy who made old mate O’connor’s statue, Pietro Porcelli. 

As a side note check out what Hal Colbatch did about the Spanish Flu outbreaks. I like how even in the early 1900s West Australia’s first reaction to outbreaks is to unilaterally close the borders with the rest of the country. Not such an unprecedented thing it seems. 

The new President had some big shoes to fill, given the last president was involved in something which was quite big by Perth standards. His appearance was in 1924 dealing with a lumpers' protest over below-award wage non-union labour being used  on ships.

McCallum, as the member for South Fremantle and minister for labour had to consider both sides of the employment coin. Not easy when you also come from a union background. Tom Fox being purely a union man was fighting for the union’s views and thus considered anti-citizen 1 by the employers, who accused him of being on the same side as Sydneysider Communist Tom Walsh.

They also accused him of being out of touch. I always find it funny when Newspapers do that. They are like discord moderators with public attention.

In spite of the West Australian claiming Tom Fox to be a hot head spurring up trouble, it was Tom Foxes own oratory that calmed the strike down and convinced them not to be overzealous, and that their actions would serve little purpose in, what was ultimately a problem with employers in Sydney, as it was a Sydney company that employed the non-union labor.

On hearing a person they hate being reasonable and strategic, the West Australian accused him of secretly being insane rather than explicitly insane. 

The lumpers union formed in 1899 and amalgamated into the federation of waterside workers in 1910. Fox became secretary in 1927 after the previous bloke, Rowe, resigned to become a politician, representing North East Fremantle.

Fox then became intertwined with inner union politics, having to deftly deal with various different inside opponents who were apprehensive about him because of his comparatively fresh existence within the union. Eventually there became two big names in the Maritime workers federation, Lumper secretary Tom, and Waterside Secretary Turley. Apparently quarrels got so hot headed between the two that, citing branch funds being drained on legal proceedings and fines which were blamed on Turley, the Fremantle branch left the federation entirely.

Fox was a vehement hater of what was called the two pick-up system, which unfortunately wasn’t the strategy of picking up two dates at the same time, the closest I have personally done to that was think it was both wednesday and thursday at the same time. To explain the problem with this system he explained what the grindset was for an average lumper:

Catch tram at 7:20am

Arrive at pick-up at 7:45am

Catch tram at 10:20am home arriving at 11am

Have dinner and head back out at 12pm

Arrive at 1pm

Catch tram at 3:20om and arrive at 4pm

The two-pickup system saw a worker waste their entire day as lumpers. They weren’t informed if they were needed by employers any more than six hours in advance, which means a lumper would spend all their time going to and from the port without knowing for sure that they will have work when they are done. This system was not unique as it was imposed for the entire state, but nevertheless he didn’t like it and wanted it gone. The federation, which upheld the system and was run by Turley, who referred to Foxes submission as “growling” responded to Fox with the following:

“While it would be a waste of time for you [fox] to submit the usual sentimental arguments in the exoneration of the actions of your members in refusing or refraining to attend the afternoon pick-ups, he [Turley] would, albeit reluctantly, agree to put to the court that there are exonerating circumstances in Fremantle”

Even if you don’t understand the exact context of that sentence you can just feel the undercurrent displeasure and backhandedness of the relationship between Tom and Turly.

Turley and his allies' main criticisms of Fox include misappropriation of funds, AKA using union funds to alleviate financial pressure during the great depression. When approached about this Fox apparently told Turly’s ally Schmidt “to go to blazes”. They also didn’t like how much Fox’s typist was paid, immensely ironic for an institution designed around ensuring workers get higher wages when it is arguing to reduce the wage of their workers. Needless to say one of the main reasons the argument flew was because the typist was a woman. 

The years of 1932 and 1933 had secession in the air. The emu war had ended in disaster, The depression, which had ironically not hit WA as hard due to the backwards nature of its economy meant that the state was getting an influx of T'othersiders desperate for work and making it more difficult for existing Western Australians.

 Altogether WA was just not having it. Although we ultimately never seceded, thankfully keeping Australia the only continent on earth without reprehensible border gore, The lumpers union did decided to secede from the federation of waterside workers partially due to Fox’s oratory which is claimed to set fire to the belly of dispirited men.

And so the port of Fremantle was severed from the ports of the other nations. My fellow westralian nationalists, rest assured we did get our independence that day, freedom of our port unions due to our quote “strong identity from other ports and special problems which the federation seldom took into account” the closest thing to an independence declaration we will ever get. 

Here is how the quote goes from Patsy Sharp:

“Fox, as a public figure, had enemies of a different, a-political kind. One day, as he sat working at his wide desk in his office at Trades Hall, a Russian Gentleman entered, adamant that fox had approached a local chemist and required him not to prescribe medicine for him. It was a ludicrous and unlikely story. However that may have been, Fox was threatened with a  cocked and loaded gun. Fox eased around the desk and in admirable bulldog Drummond style, supposedly executing a flying football tackle, knocked the gun from the Russian gentleman’s hand, whereupon it flew out the door, skittered down the corridor, and stopped at the feet of” 

You guessed it, his very surprised typist.

This is where we reach the end of this soon to be silver foxes union life, for he ends his career in 1935 when our poor sweet Alex McCallum retires, and as we know in my old video dies from issues with his lymphatic system. Tom Fox dared to stand where he once stood, and ran as South Fremantle's representative in parliament on a platform of industrial issues and a dream.

Now he has truly become Tom the Silver of Fox. His years as an elder politician were marked by white hair living in a workers home. He still spent his spare time playing bridge though. He sadly suffered a stroke in January of  1951, which he soldiered through until April where a round two stroke came back and hit harder, causing his demise a few days later, still with a briefcase of documents he was meant to finish before he died.