The Committee for Defence of Native Rights used the Western Australia Communist Party newspaper, the Workers’ Star, as its principal means of publicising the strike. Communist Party members Graham Alcorn and Dorothy Hewett wrote stories for it on the basis of reports that McLeod sent. They represented the conflict in the Pilbara as a typical industrial dispute between employers and employees as well as a struggle for democratic rights.
CDNR Uses Communist Newspaper to Publicise Strike
Citation
Workers’ Star, 9 August 1946, p. 1, ‘Don McLeod Arrested Again: Natives Solid.’
Related Sources
Native Persecution is Denounced: Big Perth Protest
Once the strike began, a fierce propaganda battle began in which the opposing sides gave highly partial accounts of it in order to win public support: on the one hand, the government and the pastoralists told stories in which they sought to minimise the impact of the strike; on the other, the sympathisers of the strike gave the impression of a highly successful industrial action by the Aboriginal people.
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