Review by Toby Oakes
Anyone with even a remote interest in public affairs would have seen, heard, or read about Hughie Williams at some time over the past 30 years on our TV screens, radios, and in newspapers.
Williams has been a long-serving official of the Transport Workers’ Union, and has for more than a decade held the position of its Queensland branch secretary. As an outside observer, he has always come across in the media as a tough union boss, ready to stand up for his members.
What most of us would not know is how tough Williams’ own life has been. Williams begins his autobiography by detailing his dirt poor upbringing, the death of his father, and how his mother one day just walked out on her children. Some of the stories he tells are heartbreaking.
Intriguingly he relates his deep feelings of inferiority as a boy and young man, and the role his chosen sport of wrestling helped overcome them. The book is full of anecdotes of his involvement in the Police Citizen Youth Clubs and the good and bad cops that went with it.
There are also plenty of tales of the fights he endured as a TWU organiser. Some of the most intense battles were with officials within his own union. Then there were the fights with the Bjelke-Petersen government and its anti-union laws and attitude.
Williams also covers the woeful state of the Labor Party in Queensland in the 1970s and 1980s, along with his own role as a member of the reform group that eventually put the party in a good enough shape for Wayne Goss to be elected premier in 1989.
This is not self-serving book. It is a frank account of a colourful and intriguing life. The book has been published by Williams himself and is available from the TWU by ringing 3890 3066.
