453881fd

Our History - the World's First Labour Party is Born in Ballarat

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 01:06:39 GMT

The April 1891 Seventh Intercolonial Trades and Labour Congress and the Rules Document

The Ballarat Trades Hall reflected the growing status of organised labour in this industrial city and in the colony generally. In April 1891, it was the venue for the Seventh Intercolonial Trades Union Congress held during the eight hours anniversary celebrations. The Congress, the first to be held outside of a capital city, was the largest and most influential of the pre-federation union congresses. 127 delegates attended, representing all colonies except Western Australia. There was one female Delegate, Sarah Muir of the Tailoresses Union and one Delegate from New Zealand. The Congress was the first truly representative Intercolonial Congress. A resolution accepting the constitution of an Australian Labour Federation was passed establishing a firm link between industrial and political organisation. This document is possibly the first written and intercolonially endorsed rules of a labour party anywhere in the world and months before the meetings in Barcaldine, Queensland. There are two significant documents the ‘Draft Scheme of Federation’ and the ‘Committee on Political Reform.’ The Draft Scheme states, “To secure the direct representation of Labour in Parliament and promote such Legislative reforms as will ensure social justice to Australasian workers.”

Our History - the Massacre on the Eureka Lead

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 01:02:49 GMT

Sunday 3rd December 1854 - the Attack and Massacre

In the words of Mark Twain, “It was a revolution—small in size; but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for principle, a stand against injustice and oppression … It is another instance of a victory won by a lost battle.” In the early hours of Sunday morning 3 December 1854, a stockade erected on the Eureka Lead by diggers, anxious to escape the violence and harassment of ‘licence hunts’ conducted by the goldfields ‘troopers,’ was attacked by a large force of Her Majesty’s heavily armed soldiers and police. Being Sunday morning, the diggers who had not expected the attack, were small in number and ill prepared. Officially 22 Diggers and five troopers died but we know that the death toll was much higher – perhaps in excess of 60.
Charles Evans' diary describes a funeral for a woman who was mercilessly butchered by a mounted trooper while pleading for the life of her husband during the Eureka massacre. Her name and the fate and identity of her husband remain unknown. Her death, and the death of many others, was not recorded in the official figures.

Our History - The Nature of Australian Democracy is Forged on Bakery Hill on the 11th November 1854

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:59:41 GMT

The Ballarat Reform League Charter - our Nation's Founding Document

Henry Seekamp wrote in the Ballarat Times newspaper about the meeting of diggers on Bakery Hill on 11 November 1954, "This league is nothing more or less than the germ of Australian independence. The die is cast and fate has stamped upon the movement its indelible signature… The league has undertaken a mighty task fit only for a great people – that of changing the dynasty of the Country.“ Over 10,000 people gathered to adopt the Ballarat Reform League (BRL) Charter on Bakery Hill, heavily influenced by the British People’s Charter of 1838. It is believed that John Basson Humffray penned the BRL Charter. The Charter describes the principles and objects of the BRL. It is the first document in the history of Australia to promote participatory democracy. It begins with the famous lines, “That it is the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called upon to obey – that taxation without representation is tyranny.”

Our History - David Temple Miner and Shearer

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:55:35 GMT

Young Shearer David Temple forms a Mighty Union

David Temple was born on 4 July 1862 at Bald Hills, Creswick. Little is known of Temple’s early life except that he became a miner and part-time shearer. In April 1886 shearing rates were cut. A famous story recounts a conversation with his mother where he explained his loss of income and the unfairness of the cuts to rates. His mother told him that he should do what that Spence fellow has done and organise. Inspired by his mother’s advice, Temple placed notices in the Ballarat Courier and The Ballarat Star at his own expense, calling a meeting of shearers on 12 June at Fern's Hotel, Ballarat. Temple canvassed shearers on foot from house to house. He wrote regularly to local newspapers and, when shearing began, set off by train for Echuca. He carried his swag to Nyang station, owned by Sir Simon Fraser who did nothing to impede Temple's efforts to unionise his shed. Within five weeks, Temple enrolled 1500 members, engaged other organisers and, before shearing ended, the union had 8000 members.

Our History - Curtin and Mann and the formation of our Nations Identity

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:52:14 GMT

Forging our Nations Democratic Traditions

John Curtin, the son of working-class Irish immigrants, was born on the 8 January 1885 in Creswick. He grew up in an era of increasing social unrest, when workers were beginning to assert their rights to decent pay and working conditions. His background, with its poverty and struggle and the influence of socialists like Tom Mann and Frank Anstey, led to Curtin’s involvement in the labour movement and politics. Moving to Brunswick at a young age and later to Western Australia, Curtin became Australia’s 14 ^th Prime Minister in 1941. It was a time when Australia had deployed most of its trained troops to defend Britain. On 7 December 1941, the Japanese attacked the American base at Pearl Harbour and war began in the Asia-Pacific area. As prime minister, Curtin faced what no other Australian prime minister before or since has faced: enemy attacks on the Australian mainland and the possibility of invasion. He probably first met his local State member Frank Anstey in 1902 and, with his mate Frank Hyett, soon joined Anstey's Sunday-morning study circle. He also attended Tom Mann's Economic Study Circle with Hyett, Don Cameron, John Cain and Jack Holloway. Mann had led the 1889 London Dockworkers Strike and his seven-year stay in Australia at the start of the twentieth century caused the authorities so much concern that they never allowed him to return, twice refusing him a visa in the period between the world wars. Within weeks of getting off the ship in Melbourne in 1902, Mann was appointed full-time organiser for the Political Labor Council, forerunner of the ALP, where he worked tirelessly to get workers’ representatives into Parliament.

Our History - Newspaper Editor and Prime Minister Scullin

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:49:28 GMT

Prime Minister James Henry Scullin

James Henry Scullin was born on 18 September 1876 at Trawalla. The family then moved to Mt Rowan where he attended school until he was 14. He attended night school at Ballarat School of Mines. Growing up Scullin made good use of the public library and read avidly. Active in the Catholic Young Men's Society, he developed debating skills, leading to a thirty-year association with Ballarat's South Street Society competitions as a successful contestant and respected adjudicator. For ten years he ran a grocer's shop at Ballarat for James McKay & Sons. About 1903 he joined the Political Labor Council (PLC) and helped in Labor's campaigning in State elections. In 1906 he was Labor's candidate for Ballaarat in the Federal election against Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin. He then became a political organiser for the Australian Workers' Union, helping to form branches of the PLC in the western half of Victoria, and publicising the Labor cause. Scullin won the seat of Corangamite at the 1910 Federal elections, when Labor under Andrew Fisher became the first party to win a majority in both houses of parliament. After losing Corangamite in the 1913 elections, Scullin became editor of the Ballarat Labor daily, the Evening Echo until 1922. In 1916-17 he became a leading opponent of conscription. In 1918-19 he was president of the party's Victorian branch. In 1922 he won the seat of Yarra in the Federal Parliament, moving to Richmond. He became leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party in 1928. At the general election on 12 October 1929, the ALP had their biggest majority yet in the House of Representatives, winning 46 of the 75 seats, but were outnumbered in the Senate. Former Prime Minister, Stanley Bruce, lost his own seat. Scullin (and Ballarat to his bootstraps) would have been exhilarated by the elation of the five thousand people who farewelled him and his wife at Melbourne’s Spencer Street station, matched by the crowd that hailed the train at Canberra the following day, singing ‘See the conquering hero comes’. ‘Paddy’ Lynch, one of the Hughes conscription defectors, complained in Parliament the next day about the high-spirited renditions of ‘The Red Flag’ at the Hotel Kurrajong. But two days after, the New York Stock Market crashed - the greatest financial crisis faced by an Australian government. This brought down his government in 1932.

Our History - William Guthrie Spence

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:46:40 GMT

The Miners and the Shearers

William Guthrie Spence (1846–1926) was a militant, great negotiator and successful organiser of bush-workers. Born in Scotland, Spence was the son of a stonemason who came to Spring Hill near Creswick in 1853; he claimed to have heard the shooting at Eureka in 1954 and saw it as formative on his thinking. He had no formal schooling but “at odd moments” was taught by a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. A teetotaller, a member of the militia and a leading temperance advocate, prominent in the debating society, he was a Borough Councillor from 1884 and a Justice of the Peace from 1888. “Genial and quite imperturbable, he stands out as the most remarkable man in the remarkable town of Creswick in the eighties.” By 1914-15 Spence was Commonwealth postmaster general. As secretary of the Creswick Miners' Union, with John Sampson (grandfather of Robert Menzies), President, he led 600 men into the Amalgamated Miners’ Association (AMA); both men were later black-balled by the mine-owners. Spence had no illusions about the need to protect workers from exploitation and that the workers themselves through Trade Unions had to fight for all they have and had against them “all the powers of law and law makers, of pulpit, press and platform.” Perhaps most surprising, was his early recognition of the importance of women to the movement. “The unemblazoned courage of the wives of trade unionists locked out or on strike can never become known or appreciated until the world becomes humanitarian instead of commercial. The grit that enable men, women, and children to go hungry to bed every night… are the true heroes and heroines of the world.” Spence was elected as a delegate from the AMA to Ballarat Trades and Labour Council in 1887.

Our History - (Red) Ted Rowe of the AEU and the Communist Party

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:42:53 GMT

The Ballarat North Railway Workshops and the Amalgamated Engineering Union in the 1930s

An industrial unit of the Communist Party Australia (CPA) was set up at the Ballarat North Workshops in 1931, attracting a strong group of members from the Amalgamated Engineers Union (AEU), the Boilermakers, and the Australian Railways Union, and saw the emergence into the public arena of Ted Rowe, who later became a significant national leader in the AEU and the first Communist to achieve federal office in the union. He was president of Ballarat Trades and Labour Council (BT&LC) from 1941-43. Andrew Reeves in an oration to mark the 125th anniversary of the BT&LC in 2012, stated that “Ted Rowe is remembered as an ebullient personality and a gifted public speaker, combining a flair for theatricality in politics with a fundamental commitment to militant rank and file industrial politics.” Rowe was born at Italian Gully. He had a state school education finishing with two years at Ballarat Junior Technical School and became an apprentice turner and fitter at the Ballarat North Workshops in 1922. As a devout Catholic, he joined the Catholic Young Men’s Society (CYMS) after leaving school and became their brightest star in all public speaking and debating. He joined the ALP, and a bright future was predicted for him. However, he left the ALP in 1931 and became a member of the CPA and its chief spokesman in Ballarat. Although slightly built, he was a dynamo of activity and a good organiser; an avid reader he was quick to assimilate any subject he undertook. Tony Restarick, long time unionist said Rowe was apolitical until the time that the Great Depression arrived. Restarick married in 1931, right in the heart of it; he had no money, so was attracted by Lang's Labor policies, “But then I got talking to this Teddy Rowe bloke and he convinced me that I wasn't on the right track and, eventually, I joined the Communist Party, like most of the others (Jack Brown, Ted Rowe, Beau Williams and Charlie Chung and many others) I could see that that was the only way out.”

Our History - The first Australian Union is Born

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:36:34 GMT

Ballarat's Ferns Hotel and the Australian Workers Union

A meeting held on the 12 June 1886 at Ferns Hotel reverberated throughout Australian history. William Guthrie Spence and
David Temple chaired a meeting after a sharp drop in shearing rates inspired Temple to travel from his home in Creswick across the region to visit shearing sheds and agitate for united bargaining by the many miners/shearers. The meeting brought about the establishment of Australia's first trade union - the Australasian Shearers Union. In 1894, after the Shearers Union amalgamated with the General Labourers' Union (formed in 1891), composed of shed hands and bush workers. It became known as the Australian Workers' Union (AWU). By amalgamation with other bush and labourers' unions and, by extending its constitution, the AWU now covered numerous industries and callings mentioned above. In 1891, the Queensland Shearers Union and the Queensland Workers Union merged to form the Amalgamated Workers Union of Queensland. In 1904, it amalgamated with the AWU, establishing a union with a combined membership of 34,000.

Our History - The Clunes Riot

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 23:55:49 GMT

When Peter Lalor (of Eureka fame) became a mine owner and saw a stockade of his own workforce as he tried to smash their 8 Hour provisions.

A miniature ‘Eureka Stockade’ at Clunes in December 1873 contributed to the militant spirit of the Miners Unions. This occurred during a strike of Clunes miners after Lothair Mine owners tried to break their 8 hour conditions, including mine director Peter Lalor of Eureka fame. The role of landowner and company director seemed to suit him more than that of rebel; he "disgraced himself in democratic eyes" by trying to use strike-breakers at the Lothair mine. The Clunes Miners’ Association under the presidency of the Mayor of Clunes, W. Blanchard, erected barricades of timber and stone to bar the way to five cartloads of scabs recruited by the Lothair Mining Company and being escorted by police. About 1000 unionists and a contingent of women assembled, and the scabs and the police were forced to retreat to Ballarat. The Clunes action is generally regarded as providing a stimulus for the formation in 1874 of the Amalgamated Miners’ Association with a constitution to cover all miners in Australia and New Zealand. “The excitement and cheering was great, men, women and children joining in the resistance. Nearby was a heap of road metal, and arming herself with a few stones, a sturdy North of Ireland woman, without shoes or stockings, mounted the barricade as the coaches drew up. As she did so she called out to the other women, saying: ‘Come on, you cousin Jinnies; bring me the stones and I will fire them.’ The sergeant in charge of the police presented his carbine at the woman and ordered her to desist. Her answer was to bare her breast and say to him: ‘Shoot away and be damned to ye; better be shot than starved to death.’ With the words she threw a stone, cutting the cheek of the officer. “

Our History - The Evening Echo Newspaper

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 23:48:43 GMT

Fearless, Truthful and Just - twice daily news

The Ballarat Evening Echo first went to print on the 12 February 1895 from its office in Camp Street, just down from Trades Hall. The Echo’s motto was ‘Fearless, Truthful and Just’. In July 1903, the newspaper was floated as a company of 160 shares, the Australian Workers Union (AWU) began to increase its investment in the company through individuals like John Barnes and
Charlie McGrath, and from early 1912 the Echo became a strongly labour paper. It was published daily, with two editions – early and late evening. Ballarat AWU member James Scullin was appointed editor by the Board of Directors on 6 June 1913. Scullin was a Ballarat grocer before gaining the seat of Corangamite for the Political Labour Council at the 1910 election. When he was defeated in May 1913, the AWU secured the editor’s job for him. In later life, Scullin said that he was appointed without any journalistic experience and became prime minister without having been a cabinet member. In 1916 and 1917, the Echo played an important part in the conscription debate. It was the only daily newspaper in Victoria that opposed the idea of compulsory military service. During 1918, the Echo was charged under the War Precautions Act 1914 with publishing statements prejudicial to recruiting after an article on 2 May 1918 headed ‘Peace - Is it for Ever Banned?’ On 18 February 1922 Scullin was elected to the safe Labor seat of Yarra and, at a Board meeting of the Echo the following week, Scullin was replaced as editor by his brother-in-law John Kean. The Echo struggled financially until its liquidation in February 1926.

Our History - Australasian Mine Disaster

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 23:48:41 GMT

Australia's Worst Mining Incident

On the 12 December 1882, 41 miners were working night shift at New Australasia No. 2 shaft when at 5.30 am, without warning, the wall of the reef drive burst from the pressure of water that had accumulated behind it from the disused No. 1 shaft. Some of the miners were rescued, but 27 were trapped. For almost three days the mine ran the pumps at over 10 times their normal speed, attempting to lower the water to save the trapped men. A special train was sent from Melbourne with equipment to dive the shaft. This equipment was borrowed from the H.M.S. Cerberus along with competent divers. Initial word of the accident spread quickly in Creswick and people rushed to the site to await news. On the 15 December the rescuers reached the trapped workers; 22 men perished and only five survived. At 2 pm that day over 15,000 people lined the roadway between the mine and the cemetery to bid farewell to the 22 workers, including over 2,000 members of the Amalgamated Miners Association (AMA).
W G Spence, Secretary of the AMA, was among the crowd waiting for news over three days and nights. Once the worst was confirmed, Spence was first to visit all the widows, handing each of them a cheque for £20 from the union funds. Spence and his fellow unionists helped organise the funeral for the miners and continued to support the bereaved families for many years. Spence and the AMA’s actions paved the way for unions to be recognised as having responsibility for negotiating for the safety and welfare of workers and their families and strengthening the AMA’s membership and resolve in the wake of the disaster. Today the Australian Workers Union (AWU) continues to preserve the site, cemetery monuments and graves of the 22 workers.

Ballarat Reform League Service 11th Nov 2023 Bakery Hill

Sat, 11 Nov 2023 00:48:24 GMT

Speech by BRTLC Secretary 169th Anniversary of the adoption of the Ballarat Reform League Charter

I acknowledge that this land was stolen from the Wadawurrung People of the Great Kulin Nation, never ceded. Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land. And like the Reform League Charter the Uluru Statement from the Heart remains unfinished business.

I would like to thank sister Elisa and the parishioners of St Paul’s for their generous hospitality, and to those assisting with this evening’s service.

It is so important to us that this event has become an annual fixture for the future, to continue to highlight the importance of the Reform League Charter.

I acknowledge today, on the 11 ^th that it is also the anniversary of Armistice Day and the day that the Whitlam Government was overthrown in a coup – maintain the rage Comrades!

Spring into summer of 1854 had seen strange weather, sudden fierce thunder, and rain events. (much like this last week) One such rain event interrupted the march to the Eureka lead for the Creswick crew, singing ‘La Marseillaise’ behind their German om-pa band, after George Black had rode to Creswick with a call to arms.

It is curious that the name ‘Paul Revere’ is famous in Australia for his ride in the American War of Independence in 1775 – but few Australians would recall the name of George Black and his equivalent ride to Creswick in 1854 – how little we know about our own history and critical moments that shaped our nation.

A squally northerly wind had fanned the flames that claimed Bentley’s Eureka Hotel for the Diggers – screaming for justice after the callous and almost casual murder of one of their mates – James Scobie allegedly covered up by the Camp.

The arrest of Gregorius, the Armenian servant of Father Smyth the Catholic Priest from St Alipius for not having a licence got the Irish particularly hot under the collar.

Surface alluvial gold was all but gone, deep leads were sunk chasing the ancient rivers – back-breaking digging week after week - but for months they had all bottomed out. Frustration grew with the sweltering heat – all the while the north wind threatened.

The British Empire had for years sent their best and brightest revolutionaries, thinkers, and progressives to Australia or to the gallows. Civil war and wars of independence had swept the Americas and much of Europe in the last few decades, leading to a diaspora of dispossessed fighters for liberty.

Many of these unlikely and ragged band of ‘misfits’ found their way to the goldfields, lured by the promise of wealth.

Lying under the night sky in their patch of mud on Ballarat, surrounded by forests stretching away forever and staring up to the Southern Cross and the Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon, freedom must never have felt closer in this strange vast land.

And with the gold beneath their feet, emancipation was only a shovel full of dirt away. But so to was poverty, hunger and despair for the vast majority –even just eking out a living was tough for the many.

Up on the Hill, initially at Golden Point, and then at the Camp on the city hill - the neat, fenced compound of the troopers and soldiers served as a brutal visual reminder of the hand of the British Empire, the rigid class structures and deadly force used to retain order and to protect the world of the cashed up and classed elites with their ribbons, lace and fancy titles. And all the while regardless of their luck, the Diggers, Storekeepers and even non-miners paid the dreaded license fee or got dragged at the point of a bayonet to the logs to be chained, charged, and fined five pounds or more.

Down in the diggings, in the mud, class was forgotten, and people judged by their ability and willingness for hard work and sweat. In the flimsy canvas tents accountants shared with convicts, engineers shared with unemployed laborers – they shared the work and the rewards, and fierce friendships were forged in the tight shafts dug of equal measures of hope and despair.

This explosive mix of rebels, thinkers and war weary refugees on Ballarat ignited, and to the Chartists like John Basson Humffray, George Black and Henry Holyoake the words of the failed peoples Charter of 1830s Britain once again started to swim in their minds and their hearts as they saw injustice and brutality sanctioned from the highest levels of government.

Archie from Jones’s Circus on Main Road prophetically wrote 12 months before in the summer of 1853 – “The tents, theatres, bowling alleys, dancing saloons and hotels, all filled with a noisy, rough, restless crowd, feverish with the excitement of the great battle with the earth for her treasures, and the feeling that something was going to happen. There was a general presentiment of impending danger. It was, to use a hackneyed simile, as if we were sleeping over a volcano that we knew must, sooner or later, burst forth.”

Hotham, the very new Governor of Victoria - a military man, was spoiling for a fight; to put these colonials in their place. But he must have felt a twinge of terror on some sweltering still nights at Toorak as to how far the line of gold and silver lace of his officers was stretched – backup and the crown were a long, long way away.

Back in Ballarat, looking across the flat to this place and 10,000 Diggers from the camp must have chilled Commissioner Reid to the bone on this day in 54.

Many of these Diggers, a highly mobile population that chased the next ‘strike’ around the golden triangle, had been veterans of the meetings in Chewton and Mt Alexander, veterans of the Bendigo Red Ribbon Petition - that had seen a proposed doubling and expanding the mining tax proposed by Hotham and the Council defeated earlier in the year. They had tasted success and victory and seen the fruits of collective action against the colonial government come to fruition in dribs and drabs.

Reid, the Ballarat gold Commissioner was willing to be the crushing fist to stop the dribs and drabs – to put this unruly demanding mob in their place in the ranks – right at the bottom and at his and his officers will.

Ultimately it was Reid’s overreach – ordering a digger hunt the day after the 29 ^th of November Monster Meeting at this place, collecting licences at the point of the bayonet from furious Diggers, many of whom he knew had burned them the night before - that made the bloody events of the morning of the 3 ^rd of December inevitable.

These men of silver and gold lace conspired to win the battle – but ultimately, they lost their place in the order, as democracy took their power and prestige and consigned them to being servants of the public rather than the rulers.

The power they craved, those military men, slipped through their fingers the next year like the blood that flowed into the dust as the last of the soldiers and police scaled the ill prepared stockade on the morning of December the 3rd. At the end of the Eureka trials - 13 charged with Treason, all exonerated.

The added sting of seeing the rebel leaders including Humffray and Lalor elected over them to Parliament and the likes of Carboni to the courts in 1855 and 56 must have been all too much to bear in this new order of things.

Such an air of inevitability hung over the goldfields – like the dry bush in 54 waiting for the spark - breaking lose all hell.

“By and by there was a result, and I think it may be called the finest thing in Australasian history. It was a revolution – small in size; but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for principle, a stand against injustice and oppression.... It is another instance of a victory won by a lost battle.” Mark Twain was to later describe it.

The 3 ^rd of December saw the explosion - But this date the 11 ^th of November – this date is important!

On the 11th November 1854, on this site at this time, one of the most significant events in the post colonization history of Australia took place. On this day, a meeting of Diggers, led by the members of the Ballarat Reform League, read, and adopted the Ballarat Reform League Charter.

The ‘Charter’ has formed the basis of Australia’s democratic system that we know today, leading to the enfranchisement of the vote for working men and later women and eventually for our Aboriginal and Torrens Stright Islander sisters and brothers.

The ‘Charter’ formed the basis and language for our modern parliamentary system, enforcing the basic underlying tenant that “it is the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws they are called upon to obey.”

In terms of the legacy of Eureka, eminent historian the late Professor John Molony said, “The influence of the Ballarat Reform League Charter on the development of Australian democracy was decisive. The constitutions of all the 19th-century Australian colonies, which later became the states that formed the Australian Commonwealth in 1901, contained the fundamental rights outlined in the Ballarat Reform League Charter, as did the Constitution of the Commonwealth itself.”

Up until the early 20th Century Australia led the world in modern democratic reform all because of the adoption of the ‘Charter’ here on Bakery Hill on the 11th of November 1854. The ‘Charter’ not only shaped Australian society, but it also had vast ramifications for democratic reform across the globe.

The ‘Charter’, just 12 months later in 1855, led to representatives of working people without land qualifications from Ballarat elected, first to the first Victorian Legislative Council, and then in 1856 to the newly created Victorian Legislative Assembly. Lalor and Humffray were elected along with other representatives of the Victorian Goldfields.

Further significant meetings on Bakery Hill from the 29th of November 1854, also led to the events surrounding the construction of a defensive stockade to protect from further digger hunts on the Eureka Lead and saw the ‘flag of the Southern Cross’ unfurled as the first Australian flag, (not the Union Jack) to which Australians swore an oath of allegiance.

A flag that would later see 13 of them charged with Treason for the act of swearing that oath.

Whilst the importance of the site of the Eureka Stockade on the Eureka Lead can never be disputed, it can be argued that the ‘Charter’ adopted at Bakery Hill had far more wide-reaching and ongoing significance for Australian democracy.

The raising of the flag of the Southern Cross on Bakery Hill also introduced a symbol to our nation of incalculable importance for our past and future. In the words of an eyewitness and contributor to the Bakery Hill meetings, Raffaello Carboni, I call upon all diggers "irrespective of nationality, religion or colour to salute the Southern Cross as a refuge of all the oppressed from all countries on Earth."

Events surrounding Bakery Hill and the Eureka Lead also led to the formation of the organised Labour Movement in Australia in 1856, (starting in Melbourne and Ballarat) our Council, its predecessor in the Eight Hour Committee and the Early Closing Association and our Hall in Camp Street led to the formation of the Modern Australian Union Movement.

The opening speech from our Trades Hall President at the April 1891 Intercolonial Congress directly referenced Eureka as the formation of the Union Movement in Ballarat and in 1900 while burying Tom Touchstone – the Couriers most famous Journalist - the fact that the Trades Hall Executive carried Toms coffin with Captain Lynch – one of Lalor’s Eureka Captains - shows an enduring and tangible connection between our Hall, our Movement, and the events at Eureka.

These events also shaped the global growth and character of organised Labour. It is for this reason why we take a strong interest in this site and this date which is of profound importance to our movement.

Jenny Beacham from Fed Uni’s recent PHD of our Trades Hall history uncovered an article in the Melbourne Age newspaper from 1856 that showed only eight days after the stonemasons marched in Melbourne on the 21 ^st April starting our Australian Labour movement, that an advertised meeting took place in Ballarat on the 29 ^th April, chaired by James Oddie Mayor of Ballarat held here on Bakery Hill establishing a Ballarat Eight Hour Committee. This was only 17 months on from Eureka.

There is no doubt that the Eureka events laid the foundations and created the atmosphere that saw working people stand up in the Colony of Victoria and demand their equitable share of the wealth they created.

The story of Eureka – the massacre, was not the end but the beginning of a story that remains unfinished to this day – a story that encompasses the creation of our democratic systems, the formation of our Labour movement and the development of Australia’s unique way of life with its fair go for all.

Remaining, is the call of the Charter – that if their voice was to be ignored, they might cause separation from the Mother Country and the creation of a new Australian Republic.

Henry Seekamp, the editor of the Ballarat times whose office was also located not far from here on Bakery Hill wrote in 54, “This league is nothing more or less than the germ of Australian independence. The die is cast and fate has stamped upon the movement its indelible signature. No power on earth can now restrain the united might and headlong strider for freedom of the people of this country and we are lost in amazement while contemplating the dazzling Panorama of the Australian future.”

It was never the intention of the League on this day in 1854 for diggers to end up behind a stockade on the morning of the 3 ^rd – the plan was to establish a large tent in the East as a Headquarters for the league, that members pay a subscription to join – that the Flag of the League was to be flown over the headquarters and that by petition and democratic means change would be achieved.

History records however that physical force overtook the moral force – “Moral persuasion’s all humbug, there’s nothing convinces like a lick in the lug!” said Tom Kennedy of the League after frequent goading by the gold and silver lace from the camp.

Eureka was not the end but the beginning of a story, one that was written and adopted here in this place, thousands of miles away from the seat of Colonial Power, the words of the Peoples Charter, carried as a burning torch in the hearts of the British Chartists of the 1830s were once again committed to paper and popular vote in the back room of the Star Hotel on Main Road and on this Hill, the greatest fears of the Empire were realized – liberty was writhing to break free.

This afternoon we give thanks to those Diggers who took a stand for liberty – many of whom sacrificed their lives so that we can live today in the Australia we do. And we remember the threads of revolution, the dangerous words of sedition, liberty, and justice - that came together at this place to pull tight and weave a new Australian future. We pay our respects to the men and women who died at Eureka and to the moral forces that continued the fight after blood was spilled, continuing to petition and pressure for change.

We acknowledge John Basson Humffray – the Secretary of the Ballarat Reform League who, as the author of this Charter document should be recognized in this country as akin to the US authors of their Declaration of Independence – Humffray died a pauper after his parliamentary career and always demanded he be buried alongside the Eureka Diggers – his wish was granted, and a public subscription saw his grave suitably recognized.

We trust in this 169th year that we might eventually realize Ballarat Times Editor Henry Seekamp’s new ‘Australian congress’ and the ‘dazzling panorama of Australia’s future’ and that the seed planted at the Star Hotel and here on Bakery Hill might continue to grow – tended by our next generations of rebels, thinkers, and activists.

Victoria's new provisional payments for work related mental health injury

balltlc@outlook.com.au — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 02:44:54 GMT

Victoria's new provisional payment for work related mental health injuries

Background

From 1 July 2021, new legislation will enable Victorian workers and volunteers who suffer from a work-related mental injury to access early treatment and support while they await the outcome of their claim. Payment for this support is called provisional payments.

This information explains how provisional payments will operate once they come into effect.

Overview

What are provisional payments?

Victoria’s eligible workers and volunteers can access provisional payments for reasonable treatment and services for work-related mental injuries, while their compensation claim(s) are being determined. When claims are rejected, workers and volunteers can continue to receive provisional payments for up to 13 weeks.

How will provisional payments help?

Provisional payments aim to:

remove financial barriers that might prevent the worker or volunteer from getting the mental injury support they need

reduce the time an injured worker with a mental injury cannot perform their work duties

improve return to work outcomes

Who can access provisional payments?

Any Victorian worker who makes a workers’ compensation claim that includes a mental injury will be entitled to provisional payments, unless:

there is clear evidence the claimant is not a Victorian worker (all claims are assumed to be valid unless there is evidence to the contrary)

the claim is not a duplicate of an existing claim

Eligible Victorian volunteers are also entitled to provisional payments, subject to the criteria above.

What are the key changes for employers and agents?

The new provisional payments law includes requirements for employers and agents to act faster if a worker or volunteer submits a mental injury claim.

As part of these legislative changes, there have been updates to the Worker’s Injury Claim Form to include a Part A and Part B to assist with the new early notification requirements. There have been updates to the Employer Injury Claim Report and the If you are injured at work posters. The claim form, employer report and posters will be available on WorkSafe’s website from 1 July 2021.

Key changes for mental injury claims include:

Employers must provide early notification of mental injury claims to their agent. Employers must complete and forward the Worker's Injury Claim Form Part A to their agent within three business days of receiving the claim. Agents will determine if the worker is entitled to provisional payments within two business days of receiving the Worker’s Injury Claim Form Part A from the employer.

Employers must complete and forward the Worker’s Injury Claim Form Part B to their agent within 10 calendar days. Employers can choose to forward both Part A and Part B together, but must do so within three business days.

Employers should also complete and forward the Employer Injury Claim Report to their agent within 10 calendar days of receiving the claim.

If the worker is entitled to provisional payments, the reasonable cost of treatment for their claimed mental injury can be paid. If the worker’s claim is accepted, WorkSafe will continue to cover these costs under Victorian workers’ compensation legislation.

If the worker's claim is rejected, WorkSafe will continue to cover these reasonable costs for up to 13 weeks.

No employer medical excess is payable where the agent has confirmed the worker is entitled to provisional payments. This applies to claims that include a physical injury in addition to the mental injury, and regardless of whether the claim is accepted or rejected.

Preparation

What can employers do to be ready?

The new laws come into effect on 1 July 2021, employers and self-insurers may want to consider the following to help them get ready:

Ensure there is a process in place to meet new early notification obligations when a claim is received with a mental injury (the process for physical injury claims has not changed).

Check if any changes are required to internal systems, processes or reports.

Ensure key staff who are involved in claims management are aware of the coming changes.

Review any internal policy and procedure documents there might be that refer to workers' compensation claims.

Have a plan in place to remove any current hard-copy versions of the Worker's Injury Claim Form and replace with the updated form. WorkSafe encourages employers and self-insurers to use this updated form.

Ensure any other references to the Worker’s Injury Claim Form, Employer Injury Claim Report and the 'If you are injured at work' posters in the workplace are updated by 1 July 2021 (the updated claim form, employer report and poster will be issued to all employers and self-insurers prior to 1 July 2021).

Plan for any communication or training needs for key staff.

Criteria

How does a worker or volunteer access provisional payments?

All workers making a claim for compensation must:

complete a Worker's Injury Claim Form Part A, except for question seven, the employer will complete this question

submit the completed Worker’s Injury Claim Form Part A to their employer

From 1 July 2021, provisional payments will be available when the worker is entitled to payments and where the claim is received by:

an employer (WorkSafe agent, if lodged directly); or

a self-insured employer

What do employers need to do for mental injury claims?

It's important to advise the worker to seek medical treatment and complete an entry for the Register of injuries at the workplace.

Once the employer receives a claim which includes a mental injury, the employer must:

Forward the Worker’s Injury Claim Form with Part A (early notification) to the agent within three business days of the worker providing it to the employer.

Employers should confirm with the worker in writing that they’ve been notified of this claim (employers can do this by giving workers a copy of the Worker’s Injury Claim Form after they sign it).

Employers should also keep a copy of all documents for their records.

Once the agent receives Part A of the claim form, they will determine if the worker is entitled to provisional payments.

Entitlement

How will employers know if workers or volunteers are entitled to provisional payments?

The agent will contact employers and workers or volunteers once Part A of the claim form has been received and entitlement to provisional payments has been determined.

What happens to the claim when a worker or volunteer is entitled to provisional payments?

The next step for the agent is to determine whether to accept or reject the claim within 28 days from the date the agent received the claim. The agent will notify the employer and the worker or volunteer of the outcome.

Why does the new legislation focus on mental injuries?

Primary mental injury claims currently take on average 27 days to determine. This is compared to the seven day average to determine physical injury claims.

The extra time needed to determine mental injury claims can result in a longer period where the worker does not have access to reasonable medical and like services.

The new legislation:

provides workers the support they need quicker. The faster people get access to services, the more positive the health outcome

ensures injured workers can access medical and like services as soon as they need them

supports injured workers' recovery and return to work.

Why are physical injuries not included for provisional payments?

Mental injuries are likely to deteriorate faster than physical injuries, so it makes sense to help workers get earlier access to the support they need.

What are reasonable costs under provisional payments?

Payments will only be made on expenses that are considered reasonable and related to the claimed injury.

Section 224 of the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013 (WIRC Act) provides that if a worker is entitled to compensation, the reasonable costs of medical and like expenses can be claimed by the worker. Examples of compensation provided under this provision include the cost of medication, consultations with General practitioners (GPs), psychologists and psychiatrists and the cost of travelling to treatment and services.

The purpose of section 224 of the WIRC Act is to ensure that an injured worker receives fair and equitable compensation for costs they incur as a result of an injury and assist the worker to achieve a safe and sustainable return to work. The definition of reasonable takes into consideration the workers individual circumstances, approved treatment practices and the recommendations of the worker’s treating health practitioner.

WorkSafe has business rules and a schedule of fees that apply to the making of payments in relation to costs to support an injured worker to return to work. WorkSafe adopts the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) items, explanations, definitions, rules and conditions for services provided by medical practitioners.

Why are rejected mental injury claims supported?

Provisional payments will cover* the worker's or volunteer's reasonable medical and like services for treatment of their mental injury, even if their mental injury claim is rejected. Payments will be provided for up to 13 weeks.

Where the worker’s mental injury claim is rejected, we know they are less likely to return to work if they are not seeking necessary treatment and support. It is important to improve return to work outcomes, irrespective of the claim outcome.

*Note: payment of the reasonable costs of treatment does not mean payment of the full costs. There may be a 'gap' between what the provider charges and what is payable under WorkSafe's schedule of fees. Expenses like travel may need pre-approval.

Will an employer determine if a worker has a mental injury?

A mental injury diagnosis is not required to receive provisional payments. This is the responsibility of the agent or self-insurer during the 28-day claim determination process.

The Worker's Injury Claim Form will be updated to include a section for the worker to tick whether they have a mental injury or not. This removes any determination about the injury type for the employer.

Will provisional payments be available where a claim for mental injury has been rejected?

Yes. Regardless of whether the worker’s or volunteer’s claim is accepted or rejected, they will still have access to up to 13 weeks of provisional payments, where entitled.

The decision on the claim may be reversed if the worker disputes the claim rejection. Providing access to provisional payments during this time ensures the worker can get help to support their recovery.

Penalties

The early notification requirement relates to when the claim includes a mental injury. Employers must complete, sign and forward the Worker’s Injury Claim Form Part A (early notification) to their agent within three business days of receiving it from the worker. From 1 January 2022, penalties will apply when employers do not meet early notification requirements.

Currently employers are required to forward a claim for compensation to WorkCover within 10 calendar days of receiving the claim from the worker. Where the employer does not lodge the claim in time, they are liable for payments due between the time the claim was lodged and when it should have been lodged. Employers will also be subject to offence provisions under the Act.

When the three business day notification requirement is introduced in legislation, the same penalty units will be applied for non-compliance as is currently the case under section 73(1) of the WIRC Act. These penalties include 60 penalty units for a natural person or 300 penalty units for a body corporate. There will be no change to the employer liability requirement, as the 10 day period to forward a complete claim still stands.

Self-insurers

What are the requirements for self-insurers?

Self-insurers will have five business days from the receipt of a claim to determine entitlement to provisional payments. This timing is consistent with workers who are employed by organisations that are not self-insurers (see above).

The 28-day determination timeframe will not start until the self-insurer has received all relevant information.

Important: provisional payments will be added into the requirements for the regulatory audit and self-insurer self-audit program (SISAP). Auditing will begin on 1 January 2022. Auditing for self-insurers is aligned with the provisional payments legislative penalties for employers. Penalties will not apply to self-insurers.

Note: self-insurers should also read the preparation information on this page. This provides suggestions for key activities to be ready for provisional payments to start on 1 July 2021.

Wage Theft now a criminal offence in Victoria

balltlc@outlook.com.au — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 01:13:31 GMT

Wage Theft now a criminal offence

What is wage theft?

On 1 July 2021, it becomes a crime for an employer in Victoria to:

• deliberately underpay employees

• dishonestly withhold wages or other employee entitlements

• falsify employee entitlement records to gain a financial advantage

• avoid keeping employee entitlement records to gain a financial advantage.

These crimes are punishable by a fine of around $200,000 or up to 10 years’ jail for individuals and a fine of almost $1 million for

companies.

Victoria’s wage theft laws target employers who deliberately and dishonestly withhold wages and other worker entitlements.

Honest mistakes made by employers who exercise due diligence in paying wages and entitlements are not considered wage theft.

Wage Inspectorate Victoria

Wage Inspectorate Victoria is an independent body that will promote and enforce Victoria’s:

• wage theft laws

• child employment laws

• long service leave entitlements

• owner driver, forestry contractor, hirer and freight broker obligations.

At the Wage Inspectorate our role under Victoria’s wage theft laws is to:

• inform, educate and assist businesses

and workers about their rights and obligations

• investigate wage theft and prosecute offenders

• respond to reports and tip-offs about wage theft.

We only investigate matters that occurred in Victoria or have a link to Victoria.

Independent investigations

We conduct independent, impartial and transparent investigations to determine whether we believe wage theft offences have

been committed. Our inspectors will:

• clearly explain the allegation made against a business

• provide the business with an opportunity to respond to the allegations

• ask questions about the matter

• ask for documents or other relevant information.

We will let businesses know the outcome of an investigation, if appropriate.

Strong powers

Our inspectors have strong powers that they can use to investigate potential wage theft offences, including the power to:

• enter premises

• obtain information and documents

• seize evidence

• require a person to give evidence or answer questions under oath or affirmation

• apply for and execute search warrants.

Many of these powers are coercive, meaning people must cooperate with requests made, unless they have a reasonable excuse for not doing so.

Proportionate responses

If we believe a wage theft offence has been committed, we may:

• issue a formal written warning

• accept an enforceable undertaking

• bring criminal proceedings

• refer indictable matters to the Office of Public Prosecutions for advice and criminal prosecution

www.vic.gov.au/wage-inspectorate-victoria

WHY DID 800 (OR MORE) PEOPLE TURN UP AT THE BALLARAT TOWN HALL on 21 April 1937

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 22:02:09 GMT

Courier, 22 April 1937 ‘Lively Debate on the Spanish Question”

On 21 April 1937, a crowd of more than eight hundred turned up at the Ballarat Town Hall. They were there to debate the merits of the Spanish Civil War, on the other side of the world; not so much to debate but to make clear which side they were on!

The Courier in their report of the meeting remarked that: “If there were any who supposed that the protracted correspondence in the “Courier” concerning the situation in Spain had left the general public a little weary on the subject, the attendance at last night’s debate at the City Hall would have come as a startling surprise. Long before eight o’clock the hall was packed full and the partition between it and the concert hall was thrown open. By the time the debate began the crowd stretched most of the way to the far wall.”

Many first–hand accounts of the meeting are contained in a set of tapes made by the Ballarat Library in 1982-3 as part of a project ‘Ballarat and District 1920-1940 An Oral History ’ and even thirty years later the memories were vivid and consistent. Father McInerney, later to become a Monsignor described how he had developed a group within the CYMS (Catholic Young Mens Society) who were ambitious for higher things, they were deeply interested in the teachings of the church and they wanted to go more deeply into the actual teachings and to read around those subjects. Among the leaders were John Larkins, a budding solicitor, and Jack Sheehan who later became Minister for Housing in the 1955 Cain Government and they made themselves as conversant with the church and especially with the church’s attitude to questions of the day that they undertook to give public lectures on relevant questions in St Patrick's Hall. So when the opportunity came to debate the merits of the Spanish War with Trades Hall they were ready.”

Monsignor McInerney recalled

The Communists, by the way, were successful in locking the doors so that their protagonists could be the first in and get the front seats. But the C.Y.M.S outwitted them by getting through the window and they occupied these first seats.

Beau Williams, one of the speakers on behalf of Trades Hall said that

the Catholic group marched the senior students from St Patrick’s College down and they took the front of the hall…. Other Catholics were bussed in from outlying agricultural districts. … bringing all sorts of weapons…bike chains and so on.”

B.A. Santamaria often attributed the awakening of his interest in politics to the 1937 Melbourne University debate held some weeks before the Ballarat debate, in which the Spanish Civil War and the clash of values it represented for Western civilisation was highlighted. The young Manning Clark, in the audience that day, would also later remark how this debate first illuminated for him the two competing beliefs and value systems between which he would waver – that of traditional Christianity and the rationalist ideologies born of the enlightenment. In his autobiography The Quest for Grace, he likened the atmosphere, even before the combatants entered the room, to being in the outer at a Carlton-Collingwood Aussie Rules game. The Melbourne debate in an academic setting attracted a large crowd between 1000 and 1500, of whom two- thirds were Catholics. The Ballarat debate was organized within the community and much more a broadly based event.

The Rise Of Fascism In Spain

In 1931 a Republic had been declared in Spain when the centre left Republican government of Manuel Azafia gained power. In a desperately poor nation, almost feudal in its social structure, the government introduced radical agrarian reform and disestablished the powerful Catholic Church. After a brief period of conservative power in 1934, the Left returned to power in the election of 1936. The Spanish Africa army in Morocco rebelled against the government and was transported to Spain by Italian and German aircraft creating a civil war between the republicans, who were loyal to the democratic, left-leaning and relatively urban second Spanish republic versus the nationalists, a largely aristocratic conservative group led by General Francisco Franco.

Beleaguered Spain became the focus of idealists around the world, including sixty Australians, who joined the International Brigade to fight Fascism and to preserve the Republican government.

One of those was Kevin Rebbecci who had a noteworthy Ballarat connection. The Rebbecchi family history tells that he was only 21 when he died, unable initially to be accepted into the International Brigade due to his Italian/Catholic background. He crewed on blockade runners running food into Spain. On his last trip their ship was bombed/shelled at Bilboa and they had to run it aground as it was sinking. He did then join a brigade and was machine gunned in the legs during the Ebro offensive in July 1938, and then badly injured when a mule rolled on him while being evacuated during the night. He was very knocked around and with little medical care died of yellow jaundice at Vic, 60 kms from the French border, on New Year’s Day 1939. His family have recently identified his grave. His family came to Australia during the gold rush in 1850, part of the Swiss/Italian diaspora who settled in the Central Highlands, and were involved in the Eureka Stockade. His original ancestor Antonio married Peter Lalor’s cousin, Margaret Masterton immediately after the uprising. Kevin’s father was a prominent trade union official in Melbourne, a founder and Secretary of the Federated Clerks Union and was one of the founders of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

Why Did So Many People Care?

In Australia, after World War 1 and the Russian Revolution, communism during the 1920s began to attract followers, while within the Catholic church the fear of communism had been emerging from the 1890’s, at least going back to 1891 when Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum, “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour,” addressed the condition of the working classes and discussed the relationships and mutual duties between labour and capital, as well as government and its citizens. It supported the rights of labour to form unions, rejected socialism and unrestricted capitalism, whilst affirming the right to private property. In Australia, however the reality was that communism during the 1920s was no more than a minor irritant on the periphery of the labour movement- though this altered in the 1930s as a consequence of the Great Depression. Antagonism between the two competing systems of beliefs, Catholicism and Communism, would increasingly pull at the right and the left of the labour movement.

In the 1930’s Spain became that battleground for the two contending ideologies - Christianity and Communism. The supporters of this Civil War used all the new communications technology of the Twentieth Century. Motion pictures, posters, books, radio programs and leaflets were all very influential during the war. We may think social media is a new phenomenon in the political space, but a film “The Spanish Earth” co-produced by Ernest Hemingway and Lillian Hellman which premiered in America in July 1937 was dramatically used to advertise Spain's need for military and monetary aid, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt invited Hemingway to show the film at the White House in advance of its premiere. At the same time Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘Guernica’ heralded as the most Important symbol of peace and the horror of war in the 20th Century was featured in the1937 International Exhibition in Paris. Taking inspiration from the destruction of Guernica by German bombers, an unarmed Basque (and Catholic) township, the work's size (11 ft by 25.6 ft) grabbed much attention and cast the horrors of the mounting Spanish civil unrest into the global spotlight.

The Australian Catholic Truth Society published more than three hundred thousand pamphlets on the conflict in Spain in 1936 alone, detailing tales of slaughter and carnage exacted against the church.

Looking back in 2007, Eric Hobsbawn in “The Guardian” wrote that ”In creating the world's memory of the Spanish Civil War, the pen, the brush and the camera wielded on behalf of the defeated have proved mightier than the sword and the power of those who won.”

This certainly was not apparent to the combatants fighting it out in Ballarat in 1937. For them the Spanish Civil War was ‘a war to the death between two hostile ideas of life,’ and both sides were at least agreed on this

The Spanish Civil War Erupts in Ballarat

Shauna Hurley has an excellent chapter “The Red and the Purple” in her thesis “Catholics, Communists and Fellow Travellers” about this period in Ballarat’s history. She asserts that the Spanish Civil War served to deepen the bitter conflict on both personal and institutional levels.

The Spanish Civil War issue first erupted in Ballarat in 1936, when most Trades Hall Councils, including Ballarat, passed resolutions condemning the fascist forces’ attempt to overthrow the Republican government .‘Franco and the Catholics against atheistic communists’ or ‘the democratic people of Spain against international fascism.’

At Ballarat Trades Hall Council meetings on 29 September and 8 October 1936, the council offered moral and financial aid in support of the ’heroic struggle of the Spanish people against fascism and its bestial Moorish murderers.” A similar resolution was later passed by the ACTU. E W Peters, State President of the ALP. soon bought into the debate.” He attacked the Ballarat Trades and Labour Council because of their support for the Republican government and the Ballarat Trades and Labour Council carried a resolution attacking Peters for his attitude.

The Melbourne Trades Hall Council disassociated itself with the statement of Peters by a vote of fifty-one votes to forty-one. Just prior to this, it was recorded in the Courier on Monday, 5 October 1936 that-

On Sunday 4 October, Bishop Foley ascended the pulpit at the conclusion of 7 o’clock mass at Ballarat’s St Patrick’s Cathedral and denounced the TLC resolutions. He concluded, “You men before me and those of you in unions said to have been represented at this (TLC) meeting… will not allow your money to be used for the purpose of subsidizing savages.”

Bishop Foley’s intervention was followed by numerous letters to the Editor of ‘The Courier’, until by March 1937 there were at least two every day from regular writers such as: ‘See Things As They Are’, “Student of Recent Events”, “Democrat”, “Campion”, and those who decried pseudonyms such as Ted Rowe, Beau Williams, C.A. Russell, J.Conlon (an Inspector of Catholic schools in the area)), J J Walsh, Gerard Sherry (whose father ran a business at the Catholic bookstore in Bridge Street) [1] , A Cleary and D.S. Spero. “The age-old division of a decaying ruling class fighting against the slave class attempting to gain its freedom” versus “anarchy and ‘godless barbarism” were consistent themes.

As well, Tom Hollway the local member for Ballarat, first for the UAP then the Liberal Party, and who would later become the Liberal Country Party Premier in 1947-8 and 1948-50, had given an address to Ballarat Rotary in February 1937 which was reported in the “Courier”. Hollway was quite certain that Communism was obtaining too great a hold on Ballarat. With regard to Spain he said there was a conflict between the rebel or Christian forces and the socialistic and communistic forces of the present Spanish Government. He thought that conflict had to some extent been limited, and there was a reasonable prospect of at least temporary peace in Europe.

The Great Debate

At Trades Hall, they decided to throw down the gauntlet to Hollway and on March 19, 1937 Ted Rowe gave a public address on the Spanish Civil War to a well-attended meeting. The subsequent debate was the culmination of a challenge by the Campions to the Trades Hall extended in the ‘Courier’. The proposition was “That the Spanish Government is the ruin of Spain” with speakers for the motion being Jack Sheehan and Stan Ingwerson who had taken the same side in the Melbourne University debate, and speaking against Ted Rowe and Beau Williams. Jack Sheehan, just a young man, but also to go on to be a major ALPr figure in Ballarat for another twenty years, and whose office when he was Minister of Housing in the Cain government was in the Ballarat Trades Hall, on this night was on the opposite side in the battle of ideas.

Memories of that night lived on. These recollections from interviews with people who were there that night who still remembered it vividly in 1983.Bert Williams who worked at the Ballarat North Workshops said –

Ted Rowe was debating Communism…. and Beau Williams, they both worked at the workshops. Billy, little Billy (W.A. Prowse), he was the chairman anyway. It was packed out at the City Hall. The scare of Communism here.” Monsignor McInerney, organiser of the Campion society said “The Campion's, and to some extent the C.Y.M.S. were, naturally, pro Franco in this fight against what was quite obviously Communist infiltration. At the same time, especially centring in the workshops in North Ballarat, there was quite a dynamic group of Communists led by Ted Rowe who later gained a certain Australia- wide fame as a leading Communist.” Beau Williams, referring to the call by Ingwerson at the beginning of the debate ”Viva Christo Re (Long Live Christ the King)” found’ “the scene from the platform at this call…indescribable, the majority of the audience rose, screaming, and shouting.

In 1983 looking back, John Bongiorno, local fruiterer and Ballarat Catholic identity summed it up -

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, but in those days it was all ”black and white". You were either a rabid Communist or a devout Catholic, and some people felt very, very strongly. Spain was still seen as far away, and it would be a place where you could recommend rain to go to, rather than something that involved us in Ballarat.” has a tone of bemusement about it still thirty years later.

It was a very good debate that memorable night, and the Town Hall was packed. It aroused a lot of interest. That was a world event that shook Ballarat. I don't think that it led to much acrimonious discussion…Chiefly amongst people who read however. I would have been about 26 or so then, and certainly it was argued about at the workplace, mainly between Catholics (they were called fascists) and Communists, and their "fellow travellers.

We were told stories (and they were probably true), that nuns were being raped and bayoneted, and priests were crucified on the steps of their own churches. It was a sticky situation over there, but it seemed a long way away, and I suppose only people who read and kept abreast of the world events would have been deeply moved by it. Well, you see it was the Campion society, intellectual laymen who represent the church. Some people would still remember the Campion Society, a group of intellectuals based in the Melbourne University. There was Bob Santamaria, one of the chief instigators of the Campion movement, and they did build up a strong defence of the Catholic Church. Belloc, Chesterton, Waugh, Martindale, were our heroes. The arch enemy in those days was the Communist. These people were genuinely hungry for social justice. With some reason, they argued that the old church was equally as guilty as the Capitalist, were in league with them, and had been exploiting the workers. No one today would deny that. The church had not yet experienced Vatican II, the windows and doors of the church were still tightly locked against "the world the flesh, the devil", and the landless, exploited people. It was the dynamism of the ‘commo’ activist who eventually provoked a Catholic reaction.

Jack Sheehan recalled

I got a shock when I walked into the City Hall that night to see the size of the audience, overflowed right into the main hall. Also the Chairman was a chap W.L. Prowse, a very diminutive bloke. My first statement to one of the supporters was, “Can this bloke control this crowd?” Well, Prowse is now ninety years of age, over 90 and ‘till last year he had one of the most resonant voices you could ever hear. He was the same that night. He was a much younger man, much younger, but he held that audience. No nonsense about him as chairman. Only for him is the thing would have been out of hand.

Sheehan, not then a member of the Labor Party, summed up his opponents in the following way, and, as many others did remarked on Ted Rowe’s previous allegiances-

Williams was a much more moderate speaker than Rowe, more balanced, more reasonable man, but he believed in his cause. Rowe was a real mob orator…I think you’ve got to admit that there was atrocities on both sides. But I felt Franco’s cause was right. It was too dangerous for us as a Western Nation to risk another –ism (any -ism is the same, tarred with that one brush), allied to Nazism and Fascism. If Spain had have gone at that stage when the World War Two, Hitler was planning for that, was about to break out, you would have had a frightful situation, in the early days with Russia, Germany, Italy and Spain…I was about twenty-one. Of course Ingwersen was only about twenty-three or four. Rowe and Williams were mature men, well, I thought that, but they were young men then. Rowe incidentally, had been a C.Y,M.S. man. He was a very able little codger. He understood Marxism at a greater depth, I think, than many of his colleagues.

The deepening rift in the labour movement in Ballarat between the largely Catholic right-wing and the left wing was noted by Beau Williams.

The entry of Bishop Foley into the controversy had a tremendous effect on the Catholic Community in Ballarat and a large influx of Catholic members to Branch Meetings of the union took place. They were highly organised and were intent on electing delegates to the Trades and Labour Council. This happened in other areas throughout Australia too, but this, in my estimation, was the first development of Catholic organised attendance at Union meetings for the purpose of having a policy of the Catholic Church adopted by the Unions. This, I think, was the beginning of what later became Catholic Action which later became the Movement under Santamaria and the Industrial Groupers as they carried their policy into the Labor Party.

But the rift was felt at many levels. John Curtin, elected as federal ALP leader in 1935 maintained the ALP’s strictly non-interventionist policy towards Spain, as he believed if he “said anything about Spain he might split Labor from top to bottom.”

Appeasement

The broader context, of course, was the fear of war and an eagerness to appease Germany, Japan and Italy, shared by all the major parties. The government gave very strong support to the appeasement policies of the Chamberlain government in London regarding Germany.

Beau Williams made it clear what he thought of the appeasement argument.

The average person in Ballarat, who was a non-Catholic wasn't much impressed by it, by what was happening, They didn't understand this was to be the training ground for the Hitler and Mussolini forces to be used later in a world war, … and there was a policy of non-intervention are far as many of the powers of the world were concerned. There was always I think, as far as the governments were concerned, the hope that there would be war and if war was to break out it was to be between the Fascist powers and the Soviet Union. That was the main direction in which they were all trying to push the war, so they placated Hitler and Mussolini…. The idea was to placate them in the hope that they would ultimately vent their spleen and turn the whole of their forces against the Soviet Union and that, as far as the Western world was concerned, would have been a very good war. But it just didn't work out that way. I mean they built up the forces of Hitler and Mussolini, those voices were turned against them. The anti-war movement in the Western world prior to 1939, were saying that this type of the appeasement of the fascist forces was ultimately going to lead to war in the West, but they never ever thought that it would. Chamberlain of course came back from Munich with his little paper and umbrella and that was to be the finish of war. But that was only fallacy. But this did abide very strongly and because of the support of the Trade Hall Council here, and the fact that there was some division through the labour movement about it, the church actually entered into the controversy officially.

A BTLC resolution endorsed ‘Beau’ Williams’ view- “that in endorsing English Prime Minister Chamberlain’s actions, the Lyons government was not expressing the opinion of a huge majority of the Australian people” and demanded “that Government support the granting of credit and arms to the Spanish Government.”

In Ballarat the Courier did not take an editorial position on the Spanish Civil War but reported it in detail every day, including this article on Italian prisoners-

The lives of Italian prisoners will be spared, and they will be released at the end of the war and be allowed to go home. The Minister for Education (Senor Jesus Herandez) greeted prisoners, and said they were among fellow-workers, not enemies, and were the victim of Fascist leaders. He added “We have raised the flag of liberty. Cry to your Mussolini that you are going to do the same. The Italians wept and cheered during the speech.

But Franco won the Civil War and ruled Spain for thirty six years, although he never overcame his links to Fascism and Hitler. Franco died in 1975, having restored the monarchy before his death, making King Juan Carlos I his successor, who led the Spanish transition to democracy. After a referendum, a new constitution was adopted, which transformed Spain into a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy.

The Ascendancy of Fascism

By the end of the 1930s fascism was in the ascendancy in Europe. In August 1938, while Attorney-General, Menzies spent several weeks on an official visit to Nazi Germany and strongly supported the appeasement policies of the Chamberlain Government, believing that war should be avoided at all costs. A BT&LC resolution certainly opposed that view- ‘That in endorsing English Prime Minister Chamberlain’s actions, the Lyons Government was not expressing the opinion of a huge majority of the Australian people.’ But with Lyons' sudden death in April 1939, Menzies was elected leader and war was declared on 3 September 1939. In June 1940, the Menzies Government declared the CPA an illegal organization under the National Security (Subversive Organizations) Regulations. During the period of illegality, the CPA grew rapidly. At the time it was banned, it had 4,000 members, in the next two years it reached 15,000 and 50,000 were reading its illegal press. The circulation of The Catholic Worker edited by Santamaria, which declared itself opposed to both communism and capitalism, was 5,000 a month rising to 55,000 a month in 1940.

The British leaders of the Commonwealth having come to the late realisation that appeasement was not working so Australia was off to another war just twenty years after bearing a heavy cost of that earlier conflagration. In declaring war the words of the Prime Minister Menzies set us firmly back as members of the British Empire- ‘There can be no doubt that where Great Britain stands, there stands the people of the entire British world.’ We had stepped away from the brave and optimistic world of Clara Seekamp in Ballarat in 1855 although another wave of immigrants was coming:

No, the population of Australia is not English but Australian, and sui generis. Any one who immigrates into this country, no matter from what clime or of what people, and contributes towards the development of its resources and its wealth, is no longer a foreigner...The latest immigrant is the youngest Australian.

Compiled by Jennifer Beacham

Resources used in this article-

Ballarat TLC Minutes Ballarat Trades Hall

The Courier

Ed. P Mansfield 1982-3 Ballarat Library project ‘Ballarat and District 1920-1940 An Oral History’

Ross Fitzgerald, Adam James Carr, and William J Dealy. The Pope's Battalions: Santamaria, Catholicism and the Labor Split. Univ. of Queensland Press, 2003.

Shauna. Hurley. “’Catholics, Communists and Fellow travellers: The Ideological Battle in Ballarat 1936-1951,Unpublished BA (Hons.) thesis

Amirah Inglis Australians in the Spanish Civil War Sydney Allen and Unwin 1987