Johnny Jones – former Unionist – a Tribute

By Sandra Kyle

Sandra Kyle is Johnny’s cousin by marriage.  Johnny’s devotion to the Union movement influenced her as a young person, and she is now a staunch supporter of Unions.

The people who surround us in childhood are etched in our memory.   It is these people who create the “foundation, walls and interior spaces” of our personality.   Johnny Jones was one such person for me.   Married into our family, he was the colourful cockney character with a ready grin, who talked a lot, and joked with us kids.   I knew he was a union man even before I knew what a union was; for Johnny  ate, drank and slept unions.

Johnny was born in February 1930 within the sound of Bow Bells in a working-class area outside London’s dockland, called Plaistowe.  A publication of old photographs shows the environment Johnny grew up in: -classic two-up two-down rows of brick terraced houses bordered by hedgerows, and with a small backyard.  Inside, a kitchen with an open coal fire was fitted with a hob to take a kettle to heat, and upstairs were the tiny bedrooms.  Back then, the Plaistowe kids amused themselves playing working class games – hoops, hide and seek, street wars.  The photos show trams, (few cars), blacksmiths shops, barber shops, smoke stacks, and the milkman’s horse.   During the 1935 celebration of the Jubilee of King George and Queen Mary, every house was decorated with garlands, streamers and flags, and tables laden with party fare were put out on the roads, where children and men in paper hats feasted, tended by mothers in pinafores and celebration headgear.

Johnny’s father provided for his wife and four children by going to sea.  According to Johnny, it was a happy enough family “not too many fights”.   His father was left-wing, with strong opinions, and quite astute judgement.  When Neville Chamberlain waved his piece of paper saying “Peace in our Time” he apparently said “Well, you can wipe your arse with that document!”

At the local school Johnny had one particular teacher who was a Socialist; a good teacher and a man with a big heart.  Johnny: “All the class thought the world of him.  All the boys put money together to get him a present every Christmas”.   One of the happiest times of Johnny’s childhood was when he and his brothers were evacuated to Somerset during the war, with a newly-wed couple barely out of their teens themselves (and who, incidentally, never did have their own children).  Their home was by a canal, where the mischievous boys had lots of fun, and sometimes they helped their “Mother” on her cart that she used to sell kerosene off of.  Nearly seventy years later, Johnny was still keeping in contact with them, now in their nineties.

He began his working life at the age of 16, employed as an engine cleaner in the London and North Eastern Railway, then, like his father before him, he decided to go to sea.  From 1947-1952 he worked as a Galley Boy, Engine room caterer, Cleaner, Greaser and Fireman on a number of ships in the NZ Shipping Co and Federal Steam Navigation Co lines.   “It was a great occupation seeing the world, mixing with people on the ship.   We went to South America, South Africa, Australia, Tasmania, European ports.   The normal shipping routes.   In the main, we went across to the main port, we wouldn’t stay long, only a day, to pick up supplies or dump a few things.  We went to Wellington and Auckland in New Zealand.  It took about five months, from one side to the other.  My job was a dunking greaser.  I kept the engines oiled so they didn’t get too hot and burn out pistons or bearings.   We guarded it very jealously, our little oil can.  If things got too hot, you had a major job to strip the engine.   You treated your oil and your gadget to oil the engine pretty seriously.  Out of my family, two of us went to sea.  Some of us were away, some of us home.  I missed my two brothers’ weddings.  I was about five years at sea.”

It was on one of his voyages that he met Joan Ward, my cousin, whom he subsequently married.  His first job in New Zealand was as a fireman on the railways, as an Immigrant he was bonded to work for the government for two years. 

During his working life, Johnny worked as a boilermaker and welder for the Auckland Gas Company, McAlpine Refrigeration, New Zealand Forest Products, NuCon Industries Ltd, among other companies.  His papers reveal a story of a rank-and-file activist in the struggle for justice and workers’ rights. Coming from a working class family, with his Dad a staunch unionist, it was natural Johnny followed this line.  “The thing that drew me towards unionism was sharingness and compatability.  No matter who you was, you should be treated on an equal and fair basis.  I found that in the union movement more than I did anywhere else”. 

A small, energetic, outspoken man, when he went to a job he was invariably elected shop steward, a role he took very seriously.  He studied the awards carefully, and any breach was acted on immediately.  “I will give you instances.   One shop I went into was working until 9pm, working in the dark.  So I went to the Manager of the place, said look we’re having trouble with the lighting, it’s not good enough.  People are complaining about eyes getting tired, and it’s all due to the lighting.  The man replied that it was all adjusted.  I then reminded him that the paintwork had deteriorated, the machinery was over 10 years old, and that was the cause of the lighting being wrong. The guy said no, no way it’s going to be done.  Too costly.  I said No Problem, and called a meeting of the chaps, told them what I’d done, asked for their permission to cut out overtime so we didn’t need lighting.  Two days after I done that what was impossible suddenly became possible!”  

In one job he applied for,  the Manager said “You know we don’t supply overalls.  I said Oh yeah, yeah. He gave me the job.  Next day I said “Where’s me overalls?”.  He said “I told you we don’t supply them”.  I said “That’s right.  If I started arguing with you before getting the job. I wouldn’t have it. I got it the way I had to do it because of your dishonesty. You agreed (in the award) to conditions you’re not willing to carry out”   Johnny was sacked on the spot; it was only through Mike Sweeney of the Engineers Union that he got his job back.  “Sweeney had to hold his hand, there was that much swearing!”

Johnny’s fearless and confrontational manner with Management led to a number of sackings over the years.  In one dismissal notice he was accused of talking about one Manager in profane language, and calling him an idiot; to which Jim Butterworth, (as Auckland District Secretary) stated in writing that, given the Manager’s actions on that occasion, was a rather mild comment!  Another company advised him in writing: “that your services are no longer required pursuant to your refusal to carry out instructions and your incompatibility with staff.”  Yet to his union comrades he was a “tower of strength”.

Johnny was responsible for running a number of strikes.  One of the largest was in the Muldoon era.   “I had seen the  reason we were losing a lot of staff was we were being paid less than the award.  I went up to the Manager and I said to him “Look is there any way we can come to an agreement on wages, because we’re well under area wage and that’s why you’re losing staff.  He agreed to do it, so we had meetings, talking wages.   Then Muldoon made the statement that he was going to have a wage freeze in a week’s time. I hopped up to the Management and said “Muldoon is having a wage freeze.  What about finalizing the talks on wages?”   The Management refused. We went on strike”.

This particular company not only paid below award, but also sub-contracted work overseas.  Workers also suspected that their motives were to clean out union organisation so that when long-serving employees left they would be able to sack workers without redundancy. “All the staff went on strike.   I gave permission to leave if they wanted to.  They all stayed with the strike”.  In the sixth week of strike action and picket duty, and after numerous meetings with the employers and the mediation service (Tom Skinner was Mediator) success was finally achieved.   

When I spoke to him shortly before his death, Johnny recalled some of the people in the Union movement that he admired – John Finlay and Mike Sweeney among others – and said that he sometimes regretted the tactics he employed.    “There was one worker, a Scotsman,  wasn’t a good worker, could hardly do his job, but one thing he did have he had a sense of humour and he kept the place happy the time he was there.  That was a major.  We could forgive him for being drunk.  Once I asked him “Why do you only work four days a week?”  He said “Because I can’t live on three!” He would come out with these jokes all the time.  Anyway, they was going to sack him for poor work and timekeeping.   When he came to me for help I said “Any commission would find you guilty.  But because of what I think of you, I will help you out”.  Johnny told him to go to Management, and tell them that he had had a row with his Missus, and had a chance to go to Australia to get a job, but needed a reference.  “The Manager, in his dishonesty to get rid of him, wrote him a good reference.”. Next day when the Manager asked the worker when he was leaving, he was told that he and his Missus had made up, and he wasn’t going anywhere.   “After giving him a reference he couldn’t very well sack him.   He lasted some time after that”.

Johnny had been a meticulous worker all his working life, and after his retirement at the age of 60, he devoted his time to cultivating a large vegetable and flower garden, and to improving their house in Weymouth.   He and Paul enjoyed going out fishing in their boat.  Always interested in people and their welfare, he still took on various campaigns, public and personal, advocating for others who were hard done by, writing letters to the newspaper, to the Council, to the Government.  As late as 2004 John represented Paul after he was dismissed without holiday pay and money in lieu of notice.  

In 2006, Johnny underwent an extensive course of radiotherapy to the head and neck, which left him with disfiguring facial paralysis leading to difficulty eating and talking.  As he deteriorated, his family, Joan and younger son Paul, and daughter Kathryn, cared lovingly for him.   The day before he died I went to see him.  He couldn’t see or speak, and the morphine had clouded his mind; he was so thin and frail.  But he knew that his wife of more than fifty years was lying beside him, and he reached out to pat her arm.  Joan got a lot of pats those last days.  “I couldn’t have done what I did in my life without Joan.  She supported me when I was on strike, she’s always supported me”. 

Johnny wanted to be remembered, despite his faults, as having always tried to act in the best interests of others.  I believe this is true.   The measure of a man is how he behaves when he is undergoing trials.  Johnny bore the difficulties of his failing health with stoicism, and when he learned that his cancer was terminal accepted it fully, without self-pity or anger.  He acted with courage and dignity as the body gave in.  From as far back as I remember, Johnny Jones, the courageous, stubborn little cockney man with a cheeky sense of humour and a strong sense of justice and loyalty, has been in my life.   We lost him on November 1st, 2007,  and sincerely mourn his passing.