THE BARCOO LABOUR CANDIDATURE

*THE WORKER* 
Brisbane, February 20, 1892

Extracts from the Printed address of Mr. T. J. Ryan.

Warning: I want to keep this historically accurate nothing has been altered, it has racist comments in it, warts and all.

The address opens with a vigorous attack on the gatling-gun Government and a logical defence of Labour candidature, then says :-

First and foremost of political reforms, the labour party puts One-man-one-vote. We want a People's Parliament, not a squatter parliament, nor a bank-owned parliament. We want it firstly because it is just; I for one hold that the man who is denied voice in the making of the laws owes no loyalty to the law. We want it secondly because it is desirable; for why should acres vote, as the squatters seem to think? We want it thirdly, because the other system has been tried long enough and has proved a dead failure. There are a thousand good reasons why we want one-man-one-vote and not a single sound reason why we should not have it.

The man whose occupation compels him to move from place to place should share in the government of our common country with the man whose occupation enables him to settle; and no rich land grabber should out vote a poor and honest man. I agree in this putting one-man-one-vote first, because until we get it to talk of honest government is idle. Those now in power were put in and are kept in by the present unjust electoral system, and nothing we can say or do will remove them altogether until the people make their own Parliament on the basis of one-man-one-vote. On this reform all other reforms depend, not that we shall always be wise enough to do what is best, but because until there is one-man-one-vote the people cannot do what is best, even when they are wise enough. One-man-one-vote means that every man shall have one vote, and no man more than one vote.

COMPULSORY INDUSTRIAL ARBITRATION.  

Many people are now posing as being in favour of industrial arbitration. Did they speak and write and agitate for it one year ago, when the bush unions were offering it to the squatters, when the whole terrible time could have been ended in a moment by an arbitration board? Or did they hold their tongues about arbitration, siding with the squatters, just as they would hold their tongues again if it recurred for all their arbitration-talk. That is the way with these time-serving politicians, who say anything to get into Parliament, and then sneer at the fools who elected them. I feel sorely about this for I have stood in the prisoner's dock, and have seen comrades dear to me shut in when I was set free; and all this happened because the squatters refused absolutely to arbitrate and because grovelling politicians backed them in their refusal.

It will be one of my endeavours, as a Labour member, if I am elected, just as it was my endeavour as a member of the Strike Committee, to make arbitration in Labour disputes invariable, compelling both sides to arbitrate their differences before the Gatling gun is resorted to. We know very well who have always been against arbitration, and who have always been for it. I am one of those who have always been for it. Are you going to vote for men who are of those who have always been against it, and are really against it themselves, only using it as a cheap election cry?

[After vigorously opposing Black Labour Mr. Ryan proceeds] :-

STATE-AIDED LAND SETTLEMENT.

If half the energy which is being spent on the black labour question were spent on the State-aided settlement of the land by white Queenslanders , there would soon be work for manual workers and prosperity for all. But those in power prefer to do anything rather than that which will advantage not banks and syndicates but the people at large. They will vote money for Italian immigration and money for all other kinds of immigration and money for crooked railways and money for naval defence, and money to help the squatters refuse arbitration and crush the bush-worker. But they will not spend a penny in assisting that land settlement which the bushman all desire, and which would make this West country blossom like a rose. The Government should not only assist those already on the land by cheap railway freights and by a State Bank.

The State can get all the money it wants at less than 5 per cent, if it went about it in the right way and dropped McIlwraith and Co. And when the State can borrow money at 5 why should selectors pay 10 and 12 and even more as many do? Queensland should grow its own food for its own people, not become a sugar plantation worked by blacks and Italians in competition with all the low lived sugar islands of the world, and with no higher ambition than to drive Mauritian sugar out of the London market. We want whites on the land, not blacks, North European people not South European, and we shall never get them on so long as the squatting class control everything.

LAND-GRANT RAILWAYS.

We want no land-grant railways. Government railways are bad enough when run as at present without any regard to the well being of the people generally and simply in the interest of the squatters' and the Employers' Association. But we can hope to set right anything we object to in Government railways. Another Government would soon find out a way to re-arrange freight charges and to restore the liberties stolen from the railway employees by the present commissioners with the sanction of the present cabinet. But if we permit a land-grant railway, it will be a monopoly altogether beyond ordinary means of control; besides, if a railway is worth building why cannot the State build it? The swindling that has gone on in railway building has been possible only because the syndicates have controlled governments and parliaments, and could do about as they liked. Surely the time has come to have honest governments, who can build honest railways. It will help honest government to turn the present parties out, and put men independent of the banks in their places.

THE CONSPIRACY LAWS.

As one who narrowly escaped the honour of sharing the imprisonment which honest bushman are now enduring by reason of the gross maladministration of “justice” and the resurrection of the “conspiracy laws” which disgrace the statute books of Queensland although long repealed in England, I may be trusted to endeavour not only to remove this disgrace, but to bring condign punishment upon the true breakers of the law. There are partisan magistrates, who have notoriously stopped at nothing to serve their squatter friends, and partisan judges, who should be impeached for their disgraceful unfairness. There are police officials, who have acted, as you all know, as though they owned us as the banks own their masters, spreading false reports of strikes and disturbances even as late as last month.

There has been a conspiracy inside the Government and among Government officials to defraud us of our rights, and to crush us into subjection to the squatters. These matters should be enquired into. It is only fair-play that the truth I shall support with all my ability Mr. Glassey's motion for a commission enquiry into the late strike if it comes up next session. As a member of both Strike Committee I know that the worst that can be said of us-and far more-has been said; while what can be said of the Employers' Association and the action of Government officials has yet to be heard. Is it not just that the bushmen should have one of themselves in Parliament to talk for them and to claim Justice for them? If you think that squatters only should be in Parliament, don't vote for me; if you like fair-play, do.

DON'T FORGET THE REAL ISSUES.

Concerning my position on other matters, and there are many of importance upon which you may like information, I shall speak at various places or again address you through the press. I would ask you, however, not to lose sight of the real questions at issue by minor questions being dangled close to your eyes. And do not be led away by the stock arguments advanced to frighten timid or ignorant voters. It was said when New Zealand sent in a batch of labour candidates and installed a fairly Radical Government in power that “Capital” would be frightened out of the country. However that may be, New Zealand is rapidly recovering her old prosperity, her population is going back to her, her land is being settled and the people are so satisfied that the Government there can snap its fingers at the banks. That is what will happen here, under wiser parliaments.

Let the land only become settled, let people only find opportunity to work instead of being crowded from the land by the squatter and treated as outlaws by the squatter Government and “a brighter day” will indeed dawn for us. For surely everybody knows that the prosperity of the country is wrapped up with the prosperity of the wage-earners and land tillers, that where work is plentiful not only is wealth being produced but money is being “put into circulation” ; while where there is little work going on, no matter what wealth is being produced, it does the locality little good if it is all being shipped off to London and little coming back in exchange any further than Melbourne. That is why the country can never be prosperous until we break the power of the squatter, and of the banks who own the squatter. That is why we are all interested, all who live here, in the development of the country and the State-aided settlement of the land.

It is a crime that any man willing to work should be unable to find it; the perpetrators of this crime are those who, like the present Government and Parliament, do nothing but hedge imported blacklegs with bayonets to prevent them being persuaded into manhood and pour immigrants remorselessly into this country where already men are unemployed.

Electors of the Barcoo! Are you satisfied? I for one am about full of it.

THE CHOICE OF CANDIDATES.

Between myself and other candidates I claim this distinction. I am chosen to stand by representative bodies of workers, and of those who sympathise with the workers throughout the electorate. I represent, not only political associations but bodies of working men, honest members of which have been ironed like malefactors and chained like bullocks and treated as outcasts and outlaws; I myself have worn the chain and faced an unjust judge. I know what the bushmen feel and how they think, and am put up by them so that I may speak for them in the Assembly where none from the West have spoken yet excepting our bitter and unscrupulous enemies.

And I say that it is only common justice, common fairplay, that the men who put me forward should be heard in Parliament, and that even opponents, if they had a sense of justice, would stand aside and let me through. If the bushmen are to be denied voice in Parliament now that so many are disfranchised, none will be to blame but the present electors if the bushmen should vote only for their own class when they are enfranchised as some day they will be. 
 

(He is T. J. Ryan the shearer a Member of the Shearers Strike Committee, he was arrested and sent to Rockhampton for trial and was acquitted, not the future Premier of Queensland, T. J. Ryan)