The strike was coordinated and led by Aboriginal lawmen Dooley Bin Bin and Clancy McKenna; and Don McLeod, an active unionist and member of the Communist Party of Australia for a short period. According to McLeod in his book, "How the West was Lost", self-published in 1984, the strike was planned at an Aboriginal law meeting in 1942 at Skull Springs (east of Nullagine), where a massacre had previously occurred. The meeting was attended by an estimated 200 senior Aboriginal law-men representing twenty-three language groups from much of the remote northwest of Australia. Discussions were protracted with the meeting lasting six weeks. McLeod was given the task of chief negotiator. The strike was postponed until after the Second World War had ended.