Eliot V. Elliott

In recognition of his organisational capabilities, in 1949, he was elected Vice President of the Seamen's and Dockers Trade Department of the World Federation of Trade Unions, with Australian-born American longshoreman Harry Bridges elected President.

Elliott supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and he was a founding member of the Socialist Party of Australia in 1971. While many labelled him a Stalinist, he was a dynamic leader of the Seamen's Union, who used every opportunity to advance the interests of his members including strong advocacy for the Australian merchant fleet.

With the advancement of shipbuilding in the 1960s and containerisation, Elliott and the union's policy making body, the National Committee of Management (COM), met over four days in June 1968 and hammered out a historic document formulating the union's attitude to technological change on the basis of social progress that was subsequently unanimously adopted at meetings of seamen around Australia. Over the next 20 years, a substantial amount of this policy of fundamental improvement of working conditions was achieved. Elliott said in 1968 that seamen had "to take advantage of technological developments" and that "the future belongs to us if we learn how to grasp and hold it". He explained, "We believe men are more important than machines and new ships."

The Seamens' Union of Australia, which amalgamated with the Waterside Workers Federation in 1993 to form the Maritime Union of Australia, was also renowned in the Australian labour movement for its involvement nationally and internationally in political issues like the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and in protests against the Vietnam War, motivated by the necessity of social progress in work and society on a national and international scale.

Some of the ashes of Elliott were scattered on the sea south east of Sydney Heads at a mariner's funeral service held on the morning of 12 April 1985.