1975, the journal could claim that the appointment, while popular with women members, "also met with wide support amongst members of the union generally". There is a second important factor in explaining the AEU's relative success in the fight for equal pay. It is the ideas about the role of trade unionism that were not just held by the union's leaders, but put into practice by its members. The articles and leaflets that the union produced supporting the claim for equal pay included arguments about how male workers would benefit as well as the women. In other words, a conscious attempt was made to look at the issue in class terms. In addition, efforts were made to connect the issue of equal pay with the view that unionism was about broader social issues beyond the workplace. The level of politicisation of the union was allied with its industrial militancy. The AEU in this period supported a series of such campaigns with stopwork action. These ranged from a student-organised march against poverty in 1969, to job meetings, collections and workplace resolutions in support of Aboriginal land rights claims in 1970, or a stoppage at Dunlop's Port Melbourne tyre and rubber factory because it was a "notorious polluter". One of the things that we were good at in the AEU and the metalworkers was converting minorities into majorities, like with issues like equal pay, like the Vietnam War, like the whole idea of anti-nuclear testing, support [for] the anti-apartheid movement ... they