Bilan
20th February 2008, 05:09
A bit of info I found on the General Strike in Australia. Or, "Australia on the Brink of Revolution".
First one is From the Socialist Alliance website:
Radical Australia's hidden history: The General Strike of 1917
Robert Bollard
On 10 September 1917 - a Sunday morning - a crowd of thousands of disgruntled workers gathered in anger and despair outside the Trades and Labour Council in Sydney. A lone figure emerged from the crowd and began chalking a notice for a meeting in the Domain the next day. A voice from the crowd yelled out: "Why not now?" In response, a procession of some thousands was formed. They marched to the Domain where they voted to denounce the leadership who had just decided to end the biggest strike in Australia's history.
The eastern states of Australia had been in the grip of a mass strike. For six weeks, 100,000 workers had struck in support of a few thousand skilled workers in the railway and tramway workshops at Randwick and Eveleigh.
The strike had begun in the workshops on 2 August in response to the introduction of the "card system", the new American system of "scientific" management involving time and motion studies, intense supervision and a systematic speeding up of the work rate. The workers in the workshops forced the strike on their reluctant officials.
It had then spread beyond their ranks, with even less enthusiasm or support from the officials of the unions whose members joined in solidarity. The head of the NSW Labor Council, E.J. Kavanagh (who also headed the Defence Committee that ostensibly ran the strike) later complained that "it was harder to keep men in than get them out".
The strike spread first to the rest of the railways, then to the coal mines as miners refused to supply coal for the railways or travel to work on scab trains. Then the Sydney wharfies walked out rather than handle scab coal. Factories, timber yards and warehouses were strikebound as their workforces refused to handle goods carted from the strikebound wharves. The carters who worked the wharves also struck. Seamen walked out all along the East Coast in active defiance of their officials. The Melbourne waterfront joined the movement as did a number of Melbourne timber yards and factories including CSR and Dunlop.
The manager of the refreshment rooms at Central Station lined his waitresses up and gave them a lecture on why they should either be obedient and serve tea and scones to scabs or leave. The young women silently donned their hats and coats and filed out.
The highpoint of the strike was reached in late August when, in response to the jailing of three strike leaders, including the president of the Miners' Union, the Broken Hill mines and the Wonthaggi coal mines in Victoria walked out. Delegates from Broken Hill tried without success to persuade the Port Pirie smelter workers to strike, but the wharfies at Port Pirie responded to the call, refusing to unload coal for the smelter, which had only a few days' supply in stock. Port Pirie at this time provided the bulk of the lead for the Allied war effort. The strike threatened to close down the Western Front!
Why had this incredible explosion of strike activity taken place? The appeal of patriotism, which had been so effective in preventing strike activity in 1914 and 1915, had clearly faded. By late 1917 key sections, possibly a majority, of the Australian working class had turned against the war.
Many Irish Australians (most of whom were working class) had lost any enthusiasm they may have had for the British Empire after the brutal suppression of the Easter Uprising in 1916. Archbishop Mannix, the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, had addressed monster anti-conscription rallies in 1916; he also spoke from the pulpit in 1917 in support of the strike. The vote against conscription in the referendum of October 1916 revealed the extent of opposition to the war.
The campaign for the "No" vote in 1916, however, had not been waged primarily by Mannix and the Catholic Church. It was the trade union movement and the left which led the fight. The revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) grew in influence - it had at least 2,000 members by early 1917, around 1,500 of these in Sydney alone. Other left groups like the Victorian Socialist Party grew in influence too. Two VSP members, Jenny Baines and Adela Pankhurst, led a crowd of 20,000 in late August in an attempt to storm the Federal Parliament in Melbourne. In September, when the strike had been turned into a bitter lockout, they would lead crowds of working class men and women through streets darkened by the coal shortage, smashing the windows of shops and factories that employed scabs.
Baines and Pankhurst targeted the shops as a protest at the rising cost of food. This underlines another cause of the working class radicalisation. The war led to hyperinflation and there was no rationing. The cumbersome system of arbitration was unable to cope. The wharfies, for instance, received no pay rise from Justice Higgins's court from 1914 to 1919; prices in the meantime had risen by 66 per cent. It is little wonder then that workers increasingly abandoned arbitration for direct action. A strike wave had started with a successful campaign by miners at Broken Hill which won victory in early 1916. By the end of that year the coal miners had launched and won a national strike for higher wages and the eight hour day. The dam had burst.
The Great Strike of 1917 erupted then in the context of economic distress and political crisis, of radicalisation and resistance on an unprecedented scale. This explains the speed with which workers responded to the need for solidarity with the railway workshops. They understood that their movement was under attack by the government and that a defeat for one would be a defeat for all.
It also explains the enthusiasm with which the strike movement spread. This was not a solemn and dour movement. Militants marched out of mass meetings singing the new song imported by the IWW from the US, "Solidarity Forever". It was sung too on the daily demonstrations of thousands that crammed the streets of Sydney - reaching up to at least 150,000 on the Sundays in late August. In one mass meeting young militants were reported using a convenient piano to play "ragtime tunes" to drown out anyone who tried to argue against striking.
Despite this, however, the strike had its weaknesses. One of the reasons why there was perceived to be a need for solidarity was the weakness of the strike in the NSW railways. The workshops were fairly solid, but the rail network itself was kept going as around a third of the workforce (predominantly in the rural areas) scabbed.
The right-wing state and federal governments responded with viciousness and organisation. Scabs were recruited from the rural areas and the posh suburbs. The universities and elite private schools of Sydney and Melbourne willingly provided recruits for the scab army. The rural and middle-class volunteers was garrisoned at the SCG and at Taronga Zoo.
A worse problem was the strike's leadership. The workers had struck without reference to the officials, but there was no alternative leadership. The IWW had been broken by state repression and the officials who never wanted the strike were allowed to run it. The Defence Committee, a body comprised entirely of officials, spent most of its time trying to stop the strike from spreading.
The federal Committee of Management of the Waterside Workers' Federation forced the Port Pirie branch to return to work with threats of expulsion. All the officials (with the single exception of Broken Hill) discouraged picketing and had no strategy to deal with the scabbing. As soon as they felt they could, they called the strike off.
The reaction mentioned at the beginning of this article was almost universal. Almost every mass meeting rejected the sellout, but the officials ignored the votes.
The militants who wanted to hold out found themselves isolated as every waverer had official sanction to return to work. Only the coal miners held out, hoping to drive out the scabs who had been placed in two of the Maitland pits.
The wharfies, who had largely been replaced by scabs (in this case many of them were not middle class volunteers and, therefore, wanted to stay) were locked out. The seamen held out in solidarity with the wharfies. But even these groups were eventually forced back. The Melbourne wharfies held out the longest, returning in early December.
But the movement which had been so badly defeated did not remain so for long. A movement in advance sometimes can learn sharp lessons from a defeat, and this was the case after 1917. In 1919 Australia was hit by the biggest strike wave in its history dominated by groups of workers who had been defeated in 1917. One of the biggest strikes was by the seamen who, disgusted by their officials' behavior in 1917, had replaced them with a team led by the Communist Tom Walsh. At the strike's outset Walsh declared to an enthusiastic mass meeting in the Socialist Hall in Melbourne: "It is the duty of every trade unionist to plunge this city into darkness".
They did and they won. Revenge was sweet.
When World War became Class War - SA. (http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=599&Itemid=1)
State records NSW - General Strike of 1917 (http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/general_strike_of_1917_12707.asp)
Any others?
Please post!
First one is From the Socialist Alliance website:
Radical Australia's hidden history: The General Strike of 1917
Robert Bollard
On 10 September 1917 - a Sunday morning - a crowd of thousands of disgruntled workers gathered in anger and despair outside the Trades and Labour Council in Sydney. A lone figure emerged from the crowd and began chalking a notice for a meeting in the Domain the next day. A voice from the crowd yelled out: "Why not now?" In response, a procession of some thousands was formed. They marched to the Domain where they voted to denounce the leadership who had just decided to end the biggest strike in Australia's history.
The eastern states of Australia had been in the grip of a mass strike. For six weeks, 100,000 workers had struck in support of a few thousand skilled workers in the railway and tramway workshops at Randwick and Eveleigh.
The strike had begun in the workshops on 2 August in response to the introduction of the "card system", the new American system of "scientific" management involving time and motion studies, intense supervision and a systematic speeding up of the work rate. The workers in the workshops forced the strike on their reluctant officials.
It had then spread beyond their ranks, with even less enthusiasm or support from the officials of the unions whose members joined in solidarity. The head of the NSW Labor Council, E.J. Kavanagh (who also headed the Defence Committee that ostensibly ran the strike) later complained that "it was harder to keep men in than get them out".
The strike spread first to the rest of the railways, then to the coal mines as miners refused to supply coal for the railways or travel to work on scab trains. Then the Sydney wharfies walked out rather than handle scab coal. Factories, timber yards and warehouses were strikebound as their workforces refused to handle goods carted from the strikebound wharves. The carters who worked the wharves also struck. Seamen walked out all along the East Coast in active defiance of their officials. The Melbourne waterfront joined the movement as did a number of Melbourne timber yards and factories including CSR and Dunlop.
The manager of the refreshment rooms at Central Station lined his waitresses up and gave them a lecture on why they should either be obedient and serve tea and scones to scabs or leave. The young women silently donned their hats and coats and filed out.
The highpoint of the strike was reached in late August when, in response to the jailing of three strike leaders, including the president of the Miners' Union, the Broken Hill mines and the Wonthaggi coal mines in Victoria walked out. Delegates from Broken Hill tried without success to persuade the Port Pirie smelter workers to strike, but the wharfies at Port Pirie responded to the call, refusing to unload coal for the smelter, which had only a few days' supply in stock. Port Pirie at this time provided the bulk of the lead for the Allied war effort. The strike threatened to close down the Western Front!
Why had this incredible explosion of strike activity taken place? The appeal of patriotism, which had been so effective in preventing strike activity in 1914 and 1915, had clearly faded. By late 1917 key sections, possibly a majority, of the Australian working class had turned against the war.
Many Irish Australians (most of whom were working class) had lost any enthusiasm they may have had for the British Empire after the brutal suppression of the Easter Uprising in 1916. Archbishop Mannix, the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, had addressed monster anti-conscription rallies in 1916; he also spoke from the pulpit in 1917 in support of the strike. The vote against conscription in the referendum of October 1916 revealed the extent of opposition to the war.
The campaign for the "No" vote in 1916, however, had not been waged primarily by Mannix and the Catholic Church. It was the trade union movement and the left which led the fight. The revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) grew in influence - it had at least 2,000 members by early 1917, around 1,500 of these in Sydney alone. Other left groups like the Victorian Socialist Party grew in influence too. Two VSP members, Jenny Baines and Adela Pankhurst, led a crowd of 20,000 in late August in an attempt to storm the Federal Parliament in Melbourne. In September, when the strike had been turned into a bitter lockout, they would lead crowds of working class men and women through streets darkened by the coal shortage, smashing the windows of shops and factories that employed scabs.
Baines and Pankhurst targeted the shops as a protest at the rising cost of food. This underlines another cause of the working class radicalisation. The war led to hyperinflation and there was no rationing. The cumbersome system of arbitration was unable to cope. The wharfies, for instance, received no pay rise from Justice Higgins's court from 1914 to 1919; prices in the meantime had risen by 66 per cent. It is little wonder then that workers increasingly abandoned arbitration for direct action. A strike wave had started with a successful campaign by miners at Broken Hill which won victory in early 1916. By the end of that year the coal miners had launched and won a national strike for higher wages and the eight hour day. The dam had burst.
The Great Strike of 1917 erupted then in the context of economic distress and political crisis, of radicalisation and resistance on an unprecedented scale. This explains the speed with which workers responded to the need for solidarity with the railway workshops. They understood that their movement was under attack by the government and that a defeat for one would be a defeat for all.
It also explains the enthusiasm with which the strike movement spread. This was not a solemn and dour movement. Militants marched out of mass meetings singing the new song imported by the IWW from the US, "Solidarity Forever". It was sung too on the daily demonstrations of thousands that crammed the streets of Sydney - reaching up to at least 150,000 on the Sundays in late August. In one mass meeting young militants were reported using a convenient piano to play "ragtime tunes" to drown out anyone who tried to argue against striking.
Despite this, however, the strike had its weaknesses. One of the reasons why there was perceived to be a need for solidarity was the weakness of the strike in the NSW railways. The workshops were fairly solid, but the rail network itself was kept going as around a third of the workforce (predominantly in the rural areas) scabbed.
The right-wing state and federal governments responded with viciousness and organisation. Scabs were recruited from the rural areas and the posh suburbs. The universities and elite private schools of Sydney and Melbourne willingly provided recruits for the scab army. The rural and middle-class volunteers was garrisoned at the SCG and at Taronga Zoo.
A worse problem was the strike's leadership. The workers had struck without reference to the officials, but there was no alternative leadership. The IWW had been broken by state repression and the officials who never wanted the strike were allowed to run it. The Defence Committee, a body comprised entirely of officials, spent most of its time trying to stop the strike from spreading.
The federal Committee of Management of the Waterside Workers' Federation forced the Port Pirie branch to return to work with threats of expulsion. All the officials (with the single exception of Broken Hill) discouraged picketing and had no strategy to deal with the scabbing. As soon as they felt they could, they called the strike off.
The reaction mentioned at the beginning of this article was almost universal. Almost every mass meeting rejected the sellout, but the officials ignored the votes.
The militants who wanted to hold out found themselves isolated as every waverer had official sanction to return to work. Only the coal miners held out, hoping to drive out the scabs who had been placed in two of the Maitland pits.
The wharfies, who had largely been replaced by scabs (in this case many of them were not middle class volunteers and, therefore, wanted to stay) were locked out. The seamen held out in solidarity with the wharfies. But even these groups were eventually forced back. The Melbourne wharfies held out the longest, returning in early December.
But the movement which had been so badly defeated did not remain so for long. A movement in advance sometimes can learn sharp lessons from a defeat, and this was the case after 1917. In 1919 Australia was hit by the biggest strike wave in its history dominated by groups of workers who had been defeated in 1917. One of the biggest strikes was by the seamen who, disgusted by their officials' behavior in 1917, had replaced them with a team led by the Communist Tom Walsh. At the strike's outset Walsh declared to an enthusiastic mass meeting in the Socialist Hall in Melbourne: "It is the duty of every trade unionist to plunge this city into darkness".
They did and they won. Revenge was sweet.
When World War became Class War - SA. (http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=599&Itemid=1)
State records NSW - General Strike of 1917 (http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/general_strike_of_1917_12707.asp)
Any others?
Please post!