The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

This novel, like its author, is a complicated thing. Essentially, it is a dystopian satire on the industrial state in the post-World War II period. Set in and around an oil refinery ‘Clearwater' in Sydney, owned by ‘Puroil' a multinational run by the Australian Board, overseen by the London Board, and the World Board, it is a corporate machine in which the workers (“prisoners”) are an insignificant part.

The bureaucracy and shortsightedness of the company is plain to see, and is of course reflective of the corporate environment the world over. Published in 1971, it is as relevant as ever, with the computer technology being the only differing factor. The company saves money by reducing maintenance, by avoiding safety matters and by limiting the workers power to be heard. The company cares little for the environment or for the local community - why would they, the refinery is fully foreign owned. Workers are discarded or demoted carefully just before their pensions kick in. The workers, and their union work hard to do less for more money, they cheat, they steal and the sabotage in revenge for their poor treatment. The union, in this case are ineffective, and sell out the workers rights.

The company meanwhile is modernising the plant - a move that will see them require far fewer workers, but the modernisation and new equipment continually fails in its reliability - for all the above reasons, but mostly due to skimping on costs.

The novel in primarily linear, but by no means conventional - if anything the style would be referred to as experimental. There are themed chapters, each which move the narrative forward, but every chapter is made up of short sections each with a title, each section typically a paragraph to a page and a half long; an occasional section might be 3 pages. These change character and perspective, often having little linear relevance, but sometime interwoven. There are many, many characters, but perhaps 30 have primary roles.

The ‘prisoners' we see do not have real names. They have nicknames – the Great White Father, the Wandering Jew and Samurai are three of the supervisors, the Slug, the Python, the Brown Snake are further up the foodchain. Workers include Blue Hills, Beautiful Twinkling Star, Two Pot Screamer, Far Away Places, Disneyland and a host of other imaginative names. The upper management are merely known by numbers.

Just beyond the plant itself, hidden in the mangroves is the Home Beautiful. A series of huts in which a team of six prostitutes operate on rotation, and where the men (on and off-shift) drink, talk and relax (and avoid their wives). This is a counter-culture to the plant, where the men still bicker and blame, but are ostensibly calmed and placated, and make (futile) plans for better lives.

There is limited plot to the novel, more a series of events which show the demise or downward spiral of the plant and of the physical and mental health of the ‘prisoners'. It isn't a short novel, my edition 450 pages of relatively tight font, and I don't consider it an easy read. Some of this is no doubt on purpose. The metaphor of small cogs in a big machine lends itself to the many characters, some of which are only involved for a page or two, or as incidental characters; the complex jargon of the plant is unfamiliar and (I don't think accurately) technical in the explanations of what men do as part of their jobs, or how they go about their sabotage. At times the jargon and descriptions of the plant come across as purposefully confusing and hard to take in - which mirrors the fact the management have no idea how the plant works, or what the workers actually do.

The novel takes its name from a piece of art one of the management has created and won a prize. It is titled “Unknown Industrial Prisoner”, the obvious play on words with the workers also faceless prisoners to the company.

The book is readily quotable - so much clever writing from David Ireland, so I just picked out a few below.

5 stars for originality and cleverness.

P141

And no more ball-ups with Workers' Compensation. A man from another plant, hungry for overtime, had worked his first night shift of the week at his own plant, then accepted a double shift on the cracker, from seven to three in daylight. He was last in bed on the Friday morning and by noon Saturday had been without sleep for twenty-nine hours. He stood watching several panel instruments with orders to give the alarm if certain things happened. Asleep on his feet, he reeled backwards many times, and recovered his balance. The time he didn't he fell back and fractured his skull. It was better to blame a slippery floor and get in a dig at the operators who mopped it than to admit the man had done too much overtime. It was like admitting the need to recruit more labour. The Unions were suspicious, but the company was so nice to the man in hospital that he maintained the floor was slippery. It was a close one.

Several drops of moisture fell on his upturned face as he took off his hat and looked with pride upward at the mighty structures. Rain? Probably a small leak, not worth mentioning. He didn't see Far Away Places, two hundred feet above, buttoning his fly. He had taken to peeing from the top rather than have the Glass Canoe on his back.

A friend gave me a copy of David Ireland's The Flesheaters. A new author for me and he had an immediate effect, one that readers like, that “get you thinking” kind of effect. “Merry Lands” was the 1st heading and some bloke is talking to a dog, trying to get the dog to understand his name. Is it an asylum? I was just not sure.

Later “I make a living from poverty” says the bloke with the dog. And so we go headlong into the world of the unemployed and destitute, the mad, the insane and the outsider. I can honestly say that I do not relate to their world but it is the written world that they are part of and I find that world strangely enthralling. I read on and I came out the end thinking that the book may have been, in fact, about those suffering depression. Who knows? Who knew? Not I. But I liked it a hell of a lot even if I may not have understood it. The author delivered prose that sucked me in.

This was enough for me to delve further and with that I got an old and battered copy of this book, The Unknown Industrial Prisoner. Again there was an immediate effect. I found that I related to every character in the book as recognisable from my now 40 years of working life. I had worked with them all in one way or another. So with that recognition was I just another one of the many Unknown Industrial Prisoners? I think that after reading this book the answer might be yes.
The author tells the following. “Several drops of moisture fell on his upturned face as he took of his hat and looked with pride upward at the mighty structures. Rain? Probably a small leak not worth mentioning. He didn't see Far Away Places, two hundred feet above buttoning his fly. He had taken to peeing from above rather than have the Glass Canoe on his back.”
My story from a distant past.....
“The Backroom Boys decided that it was better to pee in an empty flagon than bother traipsing down to the other end of the building when nature called. Get one of the 1st year apprentice's to empty the contents at day's end the tradesman's had previously decided.
The Cop pulled up on his motorbike in the courtyard 3 levels below, as was usual each Thursday morning. Police Gazette galley proofs beckoned. Surfie was busy doing what all Backroom Prisoners did, glue bits of paper together. Surfie was bored. He looked down just in time to see The Cop pull up and begin to alight from his bike. Surfie then proceeded to tip the contents of the flagon over The Cop who looked up in time to feel several drops of moisture hit him from above and to just glimpse a disappearing head. The Cop hastened up the stairs to The Backroom, opened the door and asked with great annoyance as to who had poured the water over him. The Backroom Boys were heads down and bums up gluing bits of paper together. The Overseer looked up and said “don't worry about it mate ya just lucky no one pissed on ya.”
Later the author tells of an Italian who gets one of his fellow Industrial Prisoner to break his arm so that he can claim workers compo and look after his ailing wife. I recall the story doing the rounds when I was an apprentice of a bloke “dropping” a large letterpress forme on his knees, his wife also needing care. He pleaded for compo and got it. His wife got care.

The parallel of working as an apprentice in a large printing company back in the mid 1970's and David Irelands multinational corporation oil refinery is at times startling. Industrial Prisoners of all ilk, for that matter all nations, may have very similar stories as I related above.
The book itself consists of writing that is gritty, harsh, writing that has a close to the bone brutality and is also very masculine in style. It can also be very humorous. I laughed out loud several times. But we also get the softer philosophical views by some Industrial Prisoners and at times this can come as a surprise. As the reader I was battered by cynical, sarcastic, finger nails on a blackboard satire and irony page after page. Then out of nowhere would come beautiful prose that had an almost spiritual quality. Yes, a quality that was rare but there nonetheless. And that, for me, gives a very surprising and attractive dimension to this superb novel.
After all the observations of the gritty blue collar shenanigans I also think that there are recurring themes running throughout the book. Globalisation, Industrial Relations and also Work Place Health and Safety. After reading the last few pages a couple of times I might add there was also, I think, a theme of Belonging.

With the economy seemingly getting tighter the Prisoners are less inclined to have choice as to where to find other work if they really wish to leave the Prison. Shifts get longer, accidents happen. Prisoners claim compensation due to these “accidents happening” but the Prisoners never blame the longer working hours. With this the themes resonate.

Globalisation. I would suggest that with the decline in Australian manufacturing industries, at this present time of writing, there is relevance in this book for today's world. In fact this book could be written for the beginnings of the industrial age. A work house with indentured labour is not that far back in time. I was an indentured apprentice as late as the 1970's for example. Though we no longer have indentured manufacturing workers in countries such as Australia, manufacturing workers are seemingly under an increasing threat from globalisation, globalisation that is supported by multinational corporations. This tends to leave Prisoners thinking that their futures are in a state of limbo. In Australia we see the present closure of the auto manufacturing industries in Adelaide. Unemployment is already high and as I write another batch of the seemingly weekly redundancies are announced in that city. This is the effect of Globalisation as the Prisoners now compete with cheap 3rd world wages and/or technological changes.

Industrial Relations. The Prisoners belong to a Union but it matters not. The Union sign off changes to their conditions in agreement with the multinational corporation at the Prisoners expense. The Prisoners become more inclined to slack, to sabotage, to not give a care about anyone else, bar themselves. They become their ineffective Union and even their predatory employer. This may resonates for today's times for some. My generation had a sense of loyalty to a local employer and that employer had a similar sense back towards their employees. Nowadays one seems a mere number, Prisoners expect to have many multiple jobs in their working lives. In Japan was it Salarymen who spent a life working for the same company? Maybe we never went to that extreme in Australia and other western countries but it came close. Loyalty is now thrown out the door just as the multinational corporation throws Industrial Relations out the door and in collusion with the very organisation that should be there for the prisoners.

Work Place Health and Safety. A constant theme. The Prisoners notice that the corporation ignores their safety. There are industrial accidents and even deaths. It reaches a point of cynicism by all Prisoners. The results are a mix of sabotage and finally the cataclysmic. Even today, in the day and age of authorities supposedly caring about occupational health and safety, in the not too distant past Iron Bar stood in the federal parliament of Australia and berated the country to stop vilifying a great Australian Multinational Corporation that had to head off shore so as to not pay the victims of their asbestos poisoning. What a great name, Iron Bar. It could have come straight from a novel called The Unknown Industrial Prisoner. His plea could have come from a novel called The Unknown Industrial Prisoner.

Belonging. I am unable to explain this. Reading the final chapter and then rereading it, I began to think that I may have been missing the theme that the Prisoners themselves “belonged”. They were part of their surroundings, the land, the industrial complex, the very surroundings they found themselves in. Maybe that's the point of the book. Their acceptance of their place. The way they are part of the landscape. I may not be articulate enough to explain this feeling.

So who is the audience for this book? I suspect that the Phone Hackers print media would claim it would be one for the Chardonnay Sipping Inner City Academic Elites. They may be right. I suspect that the Chardonnay Sipping Inner City Academic Elites will discuss it's resonance with the masses on the Dehumanisation of the Working Class Man by the Plutocracy who sit in their ivory towers conducting the lives of the faceless Prisoners below. They may be right as well. I also suspect that this being a very masculine book it will have less appeal for the female reader. I may be wrong and hope I am. In the end though I think it will appeal to those that want to be challenged about how industrialism could viewed in the age of Globalisation. Yes this was written in a past that may not have used the word Globalisation in the modern sense but there does seem something prescient by the past that the book has portrayed.

I began to get the mid 1990's tune Political Prisoner by Insurge going through my head whenever I put this book down after reading. The song lyrics have a certain brutality that resonate with being an Unknown Industrial Prisoner.
“This song is for all the political prisoners, both here and around the world, for the people incarcerated for fraud, stealing, and larceny, and all other crimes involving property, for it's nothing but the state protecting the rich from the poor, ever since we lost our common ground, that's what the law's been for.......I see no criminals, I see before me political prisoners.”
A brutal protest song for a brutal protest book? Yeah!