This little book brings together a number of personal testimonies of Eddie Bartrim, a worker at BHP Refractories, who died in 1997 at the age of 55. Eddie was by all accounts an extraordinary fellow and his death meant much to his mates, whose testimonies were collected by Cecily Boas, a researcher from Wollongong University carrying out research at the plant and also employed as a grief counsellor. These testimonies are unedited reminiscences, stories and anecdotes featuring Eddie, most of them just a few lines long, filling the pages almost like old photographs in a fondly compiled album. They leave little doubt that Eddie was a “character” and that his death came as a shock. The book was initially put together in‐house, but subsequently the employers contributed towards its handsome publication by Halstead Press. The book’s launch attracted much media coverage and involved the company’s CEO and the University’s Vice‐Chancellor, as well as Eddie’s family and some of his workmates.
Reading through the short pages of this book one experiences the fond emotion felt towards Eddie by his peers, the deep impact that he had made on their lives, and the vivid memories that he had left behind. It is undoubtedly a touching document. But is it of interest to social scientists? Following the publication of the book, Lisa Carty, a local journalist, sought to raise something of a storm in an article entitled “A working‐class man lost in an ivory tower”. In it, she denounced the book’s compiler and much of academia for seeking to turn this “quaint little book” into a “commentary on the proletariat”. Cecily Boas, for her part, defended the book in a chapter of her doctoral dissertation as a “valid” document, which gives voice to workers whose stories and experiences have not been heard in the past. She also claims that the book provides a “comprehensive picture of what it was like to work at the refractories (factories producing bricks for steel works), with a group of people doing hard physical work in a sometimes tough environment”.
In judging how well such claims stand up, it is worth citing some of the tales from the book – here are some that lingered in my own memory a day or two after reading the book:
He used to collect colourful strings or things that he could use to make toys for his grandchildren.
He walked up to me one day, and asked to borrow my cigarette lighter. I asked him what he wanted it for. He had a heap of stuff in his hand. He wanted to test if it was hexamine … If it had’ve been lit up it would have been “hexi”. It didn’t, so he knew. It would have lit up if it had been.
He didn’t mind how dirty a job was, or how hard it was; he’d just do any job.
We were out for a Christmas party at Western Suburbs League Club. There were about fifty people there and the flower lady came around and out of all the ones there, Eddie was the only one to buy flowers for his wife. I’ll always remember that.
They used to headbutt softwood pallets, and then when Eddie’d have a go, they’d put in a hardwood one, just for fun.
We had a fight on the day he died and he didn’t go right off. We exchanged a few words and that was it. He always had to have the last say.
I remember Eddie bagging bags out of No 1 specialties, sewing them and running down into the conveyor while the other blokes went to crib – because he wanted to finish the job.
Such are the voices heard through the pages of this book. Do they amount to a picture of life in the refractory? Hardly. One draws no more accurate picture of this than one gets a picture of life in a Yorkshire mine from photographic images of workers going up or down the mineshaft or attending family weddings. Even more narrowly, they hardly give a full portrait of Eddie himself. To be sure, some of Eddie’s qualities recur – his toughness, his love of hard physical work, his helpfulness, his resourcefulness and his willingness to take personal risks. There is undoubtedly a quirky eccentricity here, sensitivity coupled with tough manliness, seriousness with humour, a determination to do things his way with an unwillingness to engage in any oppositional activities. Yet, such traits hardly offer a full portrait of the man as a worker, a husband, a friend. As products of psychological forces of mourning and grief, they offer an eloquent obituary and undoubtedly helped in the healing process. But why did his workers have to wait until he was dead to express such views? Had the researcher not been there would they have been compiled in this manner?
Some of the narratives pose puzzles. For example, two insist that “everyone called him Ted” – curious then that the majority here refer to him as Eddie. Is this too the product of mourning? Or, how is it that such an oversize rate‐buster and occasional strike‐breaker avoided incurring the wrath of his peers? Frankly the book offers us no resources to find out these things.
Undoubtedly the book, along with other artifacts and products (graffiti, xerox lore, nicknames, jokes, farewell cards, etc.) can open some windows into the lives of people working in the refractory. In order, however, to see and understand what goes on inside what is needed is analysis, argument, discussion and, above all, imagination. The artifacts themselves are not so remarkable as to command attention. Like somebody else’s family album, it may fleetingly interest us but it is not a source of great insight. People who did not know Eddie will not remember many of the stories about him for long. What the skilful social scientist can do, however, is turn modest artifacts into powerful testimonies by putting them in context, uncovering hidden inner voices, discovering tensions and contradictions, asking questions and trying interpretations. The “voice discourse”, for all its meritoriousness, hardly gets us to the heart of situations. By all means, we must listen carefully and attentively to those whose testimonies have been neglected or downplayed, but let us not forget that this is not the end of our task as social scientists. Otherwise, we risk being sentimental tourists in alien landscapes.
