Category Archives: Conference paper refereed

2011 ASSLH conference – Much more than green bans

 

Much more than green bans: locating the New South Wales Builders Labourers’ Federation in the history of international trade unionism
 

Verity Burgmann and Meredith Burgmann

Abstract

The green bans movement of the New South Wales Builders Labourers’ Federation (NSWBLF) was immensely significant, but has tended to overshadow the union’s other achievements. This paper marks the fortieth anniversary of its green bans that commenced in 1971 by offering a more broad-ranging tribute to this extraordinary union. Continue reading

2011 ASSLH conference – A Leftist in Cold War Canberra: Bruce Yuill

 

A Leftist in Cold War Canberra: Bruce Yuill

 Stephen Holt

Abstract

On 29 July 1953, the Canberra Trades and Labor Council, the city’s peak employee body, re-elected a boisterous young Labor man named Bruce Yuill as its President.  The Council’s vote of endorsement meant that Yuill, a flamboyant socialist, headed the trade union movement in Australia’s federal capital at a crucial time politically, with the Cold War well underway and the Australian Labor Party teetering on the historic schism of 1955.

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2011 ASSLH conference – Anti-­Communism Undermined: The Uncomfortable Alliances of W. C. Wentworth

 

AntiCommunism Undermined: The Uncomfortable Alliances of W. C. Wentworth

 Lachlan Clohesy

Abstract

William Charles Wentworth, one of Australia’s most prominent anti-communist agitators, frequently linked both socialism and communism to Nazisim, on the basis of the perceived totalitarian nature of socialist and communist governments. To Wentworth, even the Chifley Labor government’s policies in the late 1940s would inexorably lead to a Soviet-style regime in Australia. Continue reading

2011 ASSLH conference – Reinstating ‘Casual Connelly’

 

Reinstating ‘Casual Connelly’: a Labour pioneer and the struggle for political rights for public servants in New Zealand

 Peter Franks

 

Abstract

When the New Zealand Labour Party celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1966, Michael Connelly was the only living member of those who were elected to national office in 1916 when the party was founded. Continue reading

2011 ASSLH conference – The ‘Radical’ Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr William Temple

 

The ‘Radical’ Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr William Temple1

Doris LeRoy

Abstract

This paper will outline the life of Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, who was the head of the Church of England worldwide from 1942-1944. Temple was an unusual archbishop, who had joined the Labour Party in Britain in 1918.  While his parentage doubtless assisted to his rise within the church ranks, his ability was recognised despite his socialistic leanings. Continue reading

2011 ASSLH conference – Biography and Ideology in the Industrial Workers of the World in Australia 1911-­1922

 

Biography and Ideology in the Industrial Workers of the World in Australia 1911-­1922: A Brief Review

Frank Cain

 Abstract

The ideas of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were introduced from Chicago to Australia via Sydney in 1907 by a group of immigrant, English-speaking, itinerant, Marxist, semi-skilled workers.  They dismissed the existing Labor governments as time servers and the Great War as against the interests of the working class. This paper will present short biographies of five of these foreign-born activists and how they adapted their radical IWW ideology that had evolved from the class war in the early 20th century United States.  Continue reading

2011 ASSLH conference – Shirley Andrews: social idealist for Aboriginal rights or agent of the CPA?

 

Shirley Andrews: social idealist for Aboriginal rights or agent of the CPA?

 Sue Taffe

Abstract

Shirley Andrews joined the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in 1945. During the Cold War years her Party membership had a negative impact on her life. Political interference by an anti-communist member of the Victorian Parliament meant she had to fight to retain a job to which she had been appointed. Continue reading

2011 ASSLH conference – ‘That’s not right’: Indigenous politics, Dexter Daniels and 1968

 

‘That’s not right’: Indigenous politics, Dexter Daniels and 19681

Julie Kimber

 Abstract

The high hopes associated with the landmark Cattle Industry (Northern Territory) Award, 1966, which promised equal pay for indigenous workers soon soured. For many activists the decision was a Pyrrhic victory. This was especially true for Dexter Daniels, the North Australian Workers’ Union organiser who, in the lead up to the case, had visited the cattle stations in the Northern Territory. Continue reading

2011 ASSLH conference – ‘Bastards from the bush’: forgotten IWW activists

 

Bastards from the bush’: forgotten IWW activists

Drew Cottle
Rowan Day

 

Abstract

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) have secured a place in Australian folklore as one of the most notable examples of class-conscious rebellion. For a time in the 1910s the State viewed them as public enemy number one, an insidious menace responsible for inciting the class conflict in Australia. Continue reading

2011 ASSLH conference – Activists in Aggregate: Collective Biography, Labour History, and the Biographical Register of the Australian Labour Movement, 1788-­1975

 

Activists in Aggregate: Collective Biography, Labour History, and the Biographical Register of the Australian Labour Movement, 1788-­1975

Andrew Moore, Yasmin Rittau, John Shields

Abstract

Despite the solid – if occasionally polemical – record of research and publication in the biographical genre by Australian labour historians over the past sixty years, there are hundreds if not thousands of labour activists whose lives have remained un- or under-documented; lost, for all intents and purposes, to both the established scholar and the enthusiastic student. The Biographical Register of the Australian Labour Movement 1788-1975 represents an attempt to address these lacunae by publishing brief (300-700 word) biographical entries on some 2,000 activists about whom we have been able to discover at least a fragment of information and whom we consider to have made a significant but hitherto un- or under-recorded contribution to the movement’s history at the national, State, regional and/or local scale at some point down to the mid-1970s.   Continue reading

2011 ASSLH conference – Labour History in Western Australia and the role of the ASSLH, Perth Branch

 

Labour History in Western Australia and the role of the ASSLH, Perth Branch1

Bobbie Oliver

Abstract

This paper surveys the current state of labour history teaching and research in Western Australia.  It argues that, while a form of labour history remains viable in labour relations, management or productivity research, it is disappearing as an undergraduate subject in University History Departments.

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2011 ASSLH conference – Melbourne Labour History

Melbourne Labour History:
A Collective Biography of its First Generation1

 Peter Love

Abstract

Bruce Shields’ recent memoir of the ASSLH’s early years, differing from the late, lamented Eric Fry’s earlier (1999) account, is a timely reminder of the vibrant intellectual culture, and the passions imbedded in it, that gave birth to our Society. Continue reading

2001 ASSLH conference – Spatial practices and struggle over ground at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops

Dr Lucy Taksa
School of Industrial Relations & Organisational Behaviour, University of NSW

Abstract

The Eveleigh railway workshops in Sydney were not just a geographic location in which specific industrial activities occurred, but also a political space in which power was exercised by the state, bureaucratic authority, and also through industrial and political mobilisation. Continue reading

2001 ASSLH conference – Challenging equality masculinism: Edna Ryan’s struggles for equal pay 1958-1973

Professor Lyndall Ryan
Head: School of Humanities, Faculty of the Central Coast, University of Newcastle

Abstract

When labour activist Edna Ryan was widowed at the age of 53 in 1958, she became the family breadwinner. She quickly found that while pay and conditions for all workers were negotiated on a triennial basis between unions and management, whereby men had access to a career path and regular pay increases, no such provisions existed for women. Continue reading