Communist Influences
The prime mover in this was Pat Mackie, a New Zealand-born, but Canadian-trained activist, who was a member of a Marxist revolutionary group, the Industrial Workers of the World.
Mackie brought in Alex McDonald, the communist secretary of the Queensland Trades and Labor Council, to legitimise the strike. Other communist union officials converged on Mount Isa as part of the Communist Party's bid to destroy the arbitration system, and as part of a concerted campaign to exclude the AWU from major resource projects and to replace it with communist-controlled unions.
If they had succeeded, the Communist Party would have had its thumb on the jugular of Queensland's mining industry.
Read more about this topic: 1964 Mount Isa Mines Strike
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