People Australia

Pat Mackie, 1965

State Library of New South Wales, 100373

Pat Mackie (also known as Eugene Markey) (1914-2009) seaman and trade union official 

Birth: reputedly 30 October 1914 at Rangataua, in New Zealand and registered as Maurice Patrick Murphy, son of Matthew Michael Murphy (1887-1945), a bushman, born at Kiewa, Victoria, and Ellen Elsie Maud (Nellie), née Poulsen (1891-1938), born at Papanui, Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand. Marriage: to Elizabeth Orme Vassilieff, née Sutton (1915-2007), born at Balwyn, Victoria, widow of the artist Danila Vassilieff (1897-1958). Death: 19 November 2009 in Sydney, New South Wales. 

• Went to sea about 1930. Remained ashore in Canada in 1933. Further work at sea, from about 1933 to 1949 mainly from ports in New York, Baltimore and New Orleans, United States of America. Claimed to have been an organiser, Canadian Seamen’s Union and to have been involved in fighting Communist elements within that union.
• Used several aliases while in Canada and the US including Wesley Bredemus, Maurice Courtzee, Elmer J. Staffenweyit, Maurice Patrick Murphy and Morris Murphy. At one stage in his life he adopted the name Maurice or Eugene Markey, later Maurice Patrick Markey and finally just Pat Mackie.
• Claimed to be fitted up on drugs charges while in Canada due to his anti-Communist activism. Involvement with Seamen’s Union in USA which probably fits in with another story that he organised in North America for the Seafarers’ International Union and the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific.
• Returned to New Zealand, reputedly deported, in 1949. Arrived in Australia in 1951.
• Owned small lead mine at Burketown near Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland. Mt. Isa Mines Ltd (MIM) bought him out, after pressuring the small business in relation to quotas. Moved to Mt Isa in 1961 for work with MIM as a timberman.
• Joined Australian Workers’ Union in 1962. Chairman of Australian Workers Union (AWU), Mt Isa, in 1964. AWU officials from Brisbane often restricted their visits to members in Mt Isa to periods of strike action and AWU hierarchy lost control of its members when they rejected a wages structure put to them in 1964. Instead, the members looked to Mackie for leadership in standing against the company and AWU leadership. In lead-up to strike he was instrumental in setting up a committee for membership control (CMC), of which he was elected chairman, in November 1964. This committee was a dissident organisation within the AWU and later allied itself to the Mt Isa Trades and Labor Council, which was not affiliated to the Queensland TLC. CMC led the strike of 1964-1965.
• He was discharged from Mt Isa Mines in October 1964 for absence of a day to attend to union business. Soon after, he was expelled from the AWU on the grounds that he had led resistance to the state branch executive’s efforts to persuade members to return to contract work. Was rank-and-file leader of Mt Isa strike in 1964-1965 throughout this period.
• Resolve of the workers was weakening under AWU hierarchy and State Government pressure. Stood down as secretary? of CMC in April 1965 and was never re-instated. Miners started to return to work with mixed results in relation to their aims. David Cameron described the strike as “one of the most bitter in Queensland’s labour history and its impact economically, politically and socially lingered for many years after” (p.1).
• In 1989, with his wife Elizabeth Vassilieff, he wrote Mount Isa: the Story of a Dispute (Hawthorn, 1989). Also with her, in 2002 he published his autobiography, Many Ships to Mount Isa.

Sources
Tribune, 17 February 1965, p 5 No. 1394; D. J. Murphy (ed.) The Big Strikes: Queensland 1889-1965, (St Lucia, 1983); David Cameron in email to Seth Wigderson, 1 May 1997; Pete Thomas, Storm in the tropics, the historic Mt Isa Struggle, 1964-65 [held in the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, ANU].