User:Oldred68

Peter Cockcroft

Peter Cockcroft is an Australian based author and political activist.

He was born in 1947 and raised in Blackburn, Lancashire. Attended Queen Elizabeth Grammar School and then Manchester University. His arrival at Manchester in 1966 coincided with the rising tide of student political activism and by 1968 he was one of a number of leading activists. In 1969, when his enrollment at the University became precarious due to non-attendance at classes, Cockcroft obtained work as a heavy laborer at Turners Asbestos Cement. He attempted to recruit workers into the Transport and General Workers Union and was sacked. Returning to studies and student agitation, he was elected Vice President of the Students Union and served in that office full time for a year. He remains a life member of the Union.

The tide of left wing activism began to ebb after 1971 and Cockcroft, who had moved from the radical Young Liberals to Trotskyism to Syndicalism, struggled to find a role in the declining movement. In 1974 he went to Australia to work for his brother. After hearing a radio interview with Jack Mundey, then President of the Communist Party of Australia, Cockcroft joined the CPA the following day. He was soon working full time for the Party in Sydney and then as an Organiser in the industrial centre of Wollongong.

Cockcroft considered that Jack Mundey's inspiring politics were far in advance of anything happening in Europe but this was not the only tendency within the Communist Party. By the early eighties, burnt out and with new family responsibilities, he resigned as an Organiser and attempted to get employment in the main industrial plant, the Port Kembla Steelworks. Refused employment, he asked the union, the Federated Ironworkers, to press for his right to work. The Company, Australian Iron and Steel, responded to the union, and to the local newspaper, the Illawarra Mercury, with a statement that "Mr Cockcroft will not be employed under any circumstances." There followed a period of litigation lasting eight years in which various tribunals and courts considered the issue of political discrimination and the plaintiff, Cockcroft, lost, won, lost and lost again. In the last of these hearings, before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the Tribunal Head interrupted Cockcroft's counsel to ask, "Just as they say in the United States, 'What is good for General Motors is good for America,' might we not also say that what is good for Australian Iron and Steel is good for Australia?"

In between court battles, Cockcroft served as Co-ordinator of the Wollongong Out of Workers Union a group of predominantly young people who had political impact far beyond their numbers.

While black-listed by AI&S, he then got casual work with a range of contractors in the steelworks under one name while fighting in the courts under his own name. Along the way, under a false name, he became a job delegate, a member of the Committee of Management of the Federated Ironworkers and a delegate to the South Coast Labour Council. Construction work was hard and eventually took its physical toll. Cockcroft sought employment in the community sector and, in the latter part of the eighties, worked for the Western Sydney Community Forum and then the NSW Council of Social Service. In 1991 he commenced working for the NSW Department of Community Services where he remained for the next 22 years.

Political activity continued with work to support the Australian Greens and the formation of Illawarra Residents for Native Title, part of the national campaign to support the native title rights of the first Australian under the Mabo and Wik judgements of the High Court of Australia.

Upon retirement, Cockcroft took up an interest in history and wrote a book, The Making of English Social Democracy which has been published as a e-book. He continues to live in Wollongong.