and Labour councils supported the strike. The strike stimulated support from the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, who helped establish the Committee for the Defence of Native Rights. This organisation raised funds for and publicised the strike in Perth including organising a public meeting in the Perth Town Hall attended by 300 people. Many of the Aboriginal strikers served time in jail; some were seized by police at revolver point and put into chains for several days. At one stage in December 1946, McLeod was arrested in Port Hedland during the strike for "inciting Aborigines to leave their place of lawful employment"; the Aboriginal strikers marched on the jail, occupied it and freed McLeod. McLeod was gaoled a total of seven times during the period, three times for being within five chains () of a congregation of "natives", three times for inciting natives to leave their lawful employment, and once for forgery. In one incident during the strike, two policemen were sent out to the Five Mile Camp near Marble Bar. When they arrived they commenced shooting the people's dogs, even when they were chained up between their legs. Shooting the dogs of Aboriginal people was considered by some frontier Europeans as a sport. On this occasion the endangering of human life angered the strikers, who quickly disarmed the two policeman. The local strike leader, Jacob Oberdoo, and other strikers held the policemen until they had regained some composure and then arranged their own arrests, insisting they be taken into custody. Oberdoo was jailed three or four times and suffered humiliations and deprivations of many kinds during the strike, but maintained his dignity and solidarity for the length of the strike. In 1972 he was awarded the British Empire Medal but turned it down. McLeod described Oberdoo's reply to the Prime Minister rejecting the medal: "...he was unable to do business with, or accept favours from Law-carriers in bad standing. 'You pin medals on dogs' was how he explained the real message underlying the award". The strikers sustained themselves with their traditional bush skills, hunting kangaroos and goats for both meat and skins. They also developed some cottage industry which brought some cash payment such as selling buffel grass seed in Sydney, the sale of pearl shell, and in surface mining. Aboriginal women played a vital role in the strike, both as workers on strike and in the establishment of strikers'