*THE
WORKER*
Brisbane,
December 29, 1894.
AN
HISTORICAL SKETCH.
****
The
Queensland Labour Party
ITS GROWTH
AND ASPIRATIONS.
BY
“QUEENSLANDER”
Introductory
– The Rise of the Unions – The “Worker” - The Strike Record –
Labour in Politics – The Opposing Forces – The Past Session –
The Government Bank – The Hope of the Future.
The
Labor Party in Queensland wishes nothing so much as its own
destruction. It recognises that to ideal politics party warfare is
unknown; that in the strife of parties the good of the community is
frequently sacrificed; that the aim of every citizen should be the
welfare not of himself, or of his faction, but of the whole society
of which he is a member. Its only excuse for existence is that “life
is real,” not ideal; that party warfare is a cardinal principle in
Nature's plan of evolution; and that while humanity retains the
merest title of imperfection the play of party feeling is an
inevitable adjunct. For, granting that unanimity of motive be
possible, how attain unanimity in mean? Macaulay has landed the
Romans who were “like brothers in the brave days of old”-
When
none was for a party,
And
all were for the State;
When
the rich man helps if the poor man,
And
the poor man loved the great.
Yet
even then there were “rich” and “poor;” and the quarrel
between plebs and patricians is one of Rome's earliest memories.
Allowances must always be made for the large poetic way of putting
things. There have been many times in the history of the world when
rich and poor were animated by the same zeal for the common good.
There was never a time when they were exactly agreed as to the manner
in which the common good could best be attained. Class environment
inevitably creates class opinion.
*
* *
Thus
the objection that a citizen should belong to no party, but should
strive only for the welfare of the State, is based on a theoretical
assumption which cannot in practice be sustained. Parties there have
always been; parties there must always be; and those who denounce
“the folly and injustice of party warfare” are merely employing a
convenient sophism to advance the interests of their own party.
“Orthodoxy,” it has been wittily said, “is my doxy; heterodoxy
is the other fellow's doxy.” Similarly, many politicians cry with
round mouth and anguished gesture, “The State – that's my party;
the other fellow's party is a faction, and factions are dangerous to
the State – which is my party. Therefore, down with parties in
politics! Every man who loves his country must support the State.”
And the fallacy is so plausible that many who hug it really believe
in its truth.
*
* *
“The
State,” in fact, is one of the words which, in Dr. Holmes' phrase,
need “depolarising.” It is the lion's skin under which the
National Ass masquerades continually; and many people do not detect
the fraud even when the donkey brays. In pre-feudal and feudal times,
the king or monarch generally constituted “the State,” with as
many of his satraps or knights as could established a claim to a
share in the government. So late as the beginning of the last
century, Louis XIV. of France could say, “The State! That's me!”
and in this utterance, adds the French historian Michelet, there was
neither arrogance nor bombast, but only a simple statement of fact.
The mass of people, the spinners and toilers, knew nothing of the
right to rule – even to rule themselves. Their place was to obey;
and if they did not know their place they were taught it by lash,
while Religion, muttering many comfortable formula about the divine
right: of kings smiled to watch the lesson, and expostulated with the
foolish people who did not know that Heaven had ordained that
nine-tenths of mankind should sweat as slaves in order that the
remainder might be lapped in luxury.
*
* *
The
rise of modern Democracy is practically contemporaneous with the
nineteenth century, though every page of history contains the name of
a Democrat born before his time – men like the rebellious Rumbold,
who “never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into
the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready
saddled and bridled to be ridden.” Rumbold was hanged in 1685, and
200 years after his death there are many persons who would have the
greatest pleasure in hanging the Rumbolds of to-day. But modern
capitalism, which has succeeded to many of the privileged of middle
age feudalism, has not been able to maintain feudal powers. As
science gradually conquered superstition, and peoples driven to
revolt discovered that kings' and nobles' blood flowed as readily as
peasants' there arose an ugly spirit of resistance to oppression from
which in the present day even capitalism shrinks daunted. Though the
strife between want and wealth, the toiler and the exploiter, labour
and capital, still continues all along the line the omens and the
advantages are all with Democracy. Men now living can recollect when,
in the most advanced societies of Europe, the “rights” of labour
were simply to live, and work, and die; when popular education was
undreamt of, and not 10 per cent, of the people had an effective
voice in their own government. Since a change so great has been
wrought in a time so brief, what may we not hope from the illimitable
future?
*
* *
The
Labour party in Queensland stands on the utmost verge of the present,
and stretches out both hands to that golden future. Its motto of
“Socialism in our time” is an expression of the sympathy of man
with man which is the best fruit of modern ethics. But the Queensland
Labour Party is bound to no particular Socialistic scheme. It states
the ideal to which it believes humanity is moving and should move; it
works with all its might to reach that ideal; but it knows that
progress is gradual, and that a millennium cannot be made at a blow.
Its methods are evolutionary, not revolutionary; it wishes to give
the justice it exacts; and if, at times of great trial, its adherents
have forgotten everything but their wrongs and struck blindly in
revenge, it asks honest opponents to scan their own record, weigh
their own actions, and say if that capitalism, at whose shrine have
been sacrificed so many myriads of labour's ghastly martyrs, should
rather excuse or condemn.
The Rise
of the Unions.
So
full of political interest have been recent years that one easily
forgets that Queensland, as an independent province, is but 35 years
old. To the great majority of people the strife between the Herberts
and Macalisters, the Lilleys and Palmers, seems almost as far removed
as the landing of Captain Cook. Even the contest between M'Ilwraith
and Griffith is rapidly becoming a mere memory of ancestry. The
political references of press and platform now rarely extend beyond
the Griffilwraith Coalition of 1890; and public thought is wholly
occupied with the deeds of the Boodle-wraith Coalition which has
succeeded it. There is so little stability in Queensland politics -
our statesman change their masks with such cool disregard of
professions and principles – that an appeal to the politicians of
ten years ago points a moral as vague as the morals of the bank
bolstering politicians of to-day.
*
* *
The
history of the Labour Party in Queensland is virtually limited to the
last ten years, and is practically concentrated within the last five.
In the early days there was no such thing as a union of labourers for
the defence of their rights; and every man fought for his own right
hand. Early conditions, indeed, bore no resemblance to those now
existing. There was no well-defined body of labourers or capitalists;
no such thing as inherited wealth or transferred credit. Every man,
with the aid of exploited Nature, was the creator of his own capital;
the transition from employed to employer was easy and frequent; and
the development of the pastoral industry, the discovery of the
goldfields, gave abundant scope for the exercise of energy and
industry with the prospect of a large reward.
*
* *
As
time went on and the sources of wealth were gradually monopolised,
the community advanced from the primitive stage in which every man
was a worker with his hands to the stage in which many used their
accumulated capital to levy toil on the labour of others. The
labourers of the sixties, transformed into the employers of the
seventies and eighties, repeated familiar experience in becoming the
hardest taskmasters of the class from which they sprang. The Tory by
birth is rarely such a brutal tyrant as the Tory of fortune. The
bitterest enemy of the labourer is the ex-labourer. The Arthur
Palmers of to-day are only distinguishable by their language as the
bullock-drivers of forty years ago. Men who have risen from the ranks
have as little sympathy with men who remain in the ranks as some
drivers have with their bullocks.
*
* *
With
the accumulation wealth and the introduction of loan money, the
delimitation between employer and employed became gradually more
marked, until capitalists and labourers in Queensland took, as they
have elsewhere taken, the shape of definite and permanent classes,
antagonised by the condition of industry. While the specialisation of
the functions of wage earners and wage- payers is not yet so complete
in Queensland as in older countries, the tendency is always for the
gulf to widen, and already the opposition has become acute. The
isolated labourers of Queensland instinctively banded themselves
together to resist the constant aggressions of their masters, and
union after union arose in self-defence. The first Queensland union
was the Operative Stonemason's Society, established to protect the
interests of its members. The example was gradually followed.
Artisans in the towns, miners on the gold-fields, seaman on the
coast, shearers in the bush, one after another joined themselves as
comrades with the motto, “All for each,each for all,” and
struggled and suffered for the maintenance of the rights of toil. In
1886 a Trades Council was formed in the metropolis, which only
included in its combination the labour unions in Brisbane. It at
first rigidly tabooed the idea of politics affecting the industrial
conditions of the wage earners, but as time marched on, so also did
progressive thought, with the result that in 1889 and 1890 the
Australian Labour Federation was established and combined nearly all
the labour unions throughout the colony in a single organisation, its
members pledged to the common support and the common defence. The
foundation of the Australian Labour Federation was at once the glory
and the guarantee of popular liberty in Queensland.
The
“Worker.”
For
long the thoughts of the Labour Party found only rare and incoherent
utterance. The bulk of newspapers in Australia are naturally on the
side of Conservatism and capital. Their business is to make money;
and they find it expedient or necessary to flatter men and parties in
authority, to uphold conventional views, and oppose progressive
opinions. They regard with suspicion and dislike the new Samson who
threatens to pull down the pillars of the capitalistic temple. The
democratic journals of standing and influence may be counted on the
fingers of one hand; and even these, though acknowledging sympathy
with labour, find the expression of their sympathy choked by the
dead-hand of the advertiser on the editors' mouths. The radical
Boomerang was a forceful example of the fate of a journal which
undertakes to at all times champion the cause of wage-earners
regardless of the opinions of business people. It was discovered that
the unionists must have a journal established on such a basis that it
would be beyond the power of any advertisers to withdraw their
support and kill it. Proposals were placed before the Federation,
enthusiastically received, and on March 1, 1890, the WORKER was born.
*
* *
That
date is a red-letter day in the history of the toilers of Queensland.
Thence forward they had a tongue to utter in glowing language all
their hopes and yearnings; a torch in the blaze of which hoary lies
and ancient sophisms shrivelled like moths; an advocate who shouted
truth on the housetops, and argued for justice with strength
irresistible. The success of the WORKER was immediate and lasting.
From a monthly issued at 3d. it became speedily a fortnightly at 1d.,
and then a weekly; and is remains to-day one of the most successful
monuments in Australia of co-operative labour enterprise. The best
testimony to its value is the bitter and unremitting hostility which
it has met at the hands of the typical representatives of greed and
oppression; and the successful establishment of the Labour papers,
notably the Eagle (Charters Towers), Patriot
(Maryborough), People's
Newspaper (Rockhampton),
Democrat (Townsville),
and Guardian (Bundaberg),
all preaching a similar doctrine, and meeting with same hostility.
* * *
To William Lane, his assistants and successors, the
Labour Party in Queensland is deeply indebted. The seed sown by the
WORKER has germinated and fructified in thousands of teeming brains;
and the issuing harvest of thought and deed will be imperishable as
long as Australia is Australia. Rarely has the hour found a man so
fitted to its need as Lane was found in 1890. His knowledge, energy,
and enthusiasm were among the chief levers which raised the Labour
movement at once to the height of success. Without counting cost or
reward, he gave himself unsparingly for the good of the cause he held
true; and his retirement to head the New Australia Co-operative
Settlement left a gap in Labour ranks which has never yet been
completely filled. And, whatever may be the outcome of the enterprise
in which he is now engaged, his single hearted devotion to a high
ideal extorts admiration even from those most hostile to his efforts
and his plans.
The
Strike Record.
One of the most valuable uses of the WORKER has been to
put before the public a record and a criticism of Labour disputes
from a Labour standpoint. Regarding the ethics of strikes there must
always be controversy; but, at all events, every case has two sides,
and before the advent of the WORKER only one side found effective
expression. The WORKER changed all that. It expressed the continual
misrepresentation of facts, which is the strongest weapon of
tyrannical employers; it shed a flood of light upon the passionate
sense of wrong, the desperate hatred of injustice, the loyal love of
mates, which take the place of religion in the far back bush; and if
it sometimes employed rather the rhetoric of the advocate than the
logic of the judge, no one who knows the forces with which it had to
combat can refuse to admit that such an attitude was both natural and
necessary.
* * *
The foundation of the A.L.F. coincided in point of time
with the celebrated contest at Jondaryan, when, beaten at the sheds,
labour took refuge in the ships, and workers by water threw down a
gauntlet for workers on land. That month of May, 1890, sealing the
compact of labour solidarity, seems to an imaginative mind the most
memorable in Queensland's Labour history. But the shearers' success
rankled; and in 1891, after the Maritime strike had run its course,
came a long and bitter conflict between the bush labourers and their
employers which left both sides exhausted and ready for a truce. The
peace patched up lasted till this year of 1894, when again feud broke
into flame which is not yet completely extinguished.
* * *
The essential point in all these quarrels was the
employers' determination at all costs or hazards to “down the
unions.” To this end they have expended much money and incredible
pains; but of course and inevitably fruitlessly. For they are
fighting against the spirit of the age, whose slow march, often
halting, never retreating, is in the end irresistible. The Labour
movement in Queensland is but a part of a movement which is
world-wide and eternal, and of which the strength and the
significance become every day clearer. Men will not now acquiesce
contentedly in the operations of a social system which condemns most
of them to perpetual idleness. It is more and more recognised that
the fruit of his labour belongs of right to the labourer; and that,
in the vast majority of cases, not the ability shown in directing
labour, or the legitimate reward of abstinence from spending the
profits of personal exertions, but a monopoly of natural
opportunities strengthened and confirmed by class made laws, is the
means by which capitalists achieve the exploitation of labour. Men
can never be equal; but it is just and expedient that all should be
placed as far as possible on the same footing of equal opportunity.
* * *
A strike is rarely profitable to the strikers; but it is
not necessarily to be judged by its proximate results. Its
justification is usually its ultimate effect upon the fate of others.
A strike is a sacrifice. Every man who goes into it knows that
henceforth he will be a marked man with the employers, who hate above
all things the display of manly independence. He forfeits his bread
now and risks it later. And frequently he does does this, not because
his own rights are attacked, but in order that other men, only joined
with him by the spirit of labour solidarity, may be the better able
to defend theirs. The strike succeeds even when the striker fails,
for his martyrdom is the corner-stone of his children's freedom. When
Curtius leapt into the gulf, he indeed destroyed himself, but he
saved Rome. Thus the condemnation of strikes, merely because they are
apparently unsuccessful in attaining given ends, is altogether
unjustified. For the knowledge that there exists the fighting spirit
which is the source of a strike prevents many aggressions which would
otherwise compel many more strikes. If employers thought that their
will would be submitted to without a struggle, wages would at once be
reduced to subsistence pitch wherever there was a surplus of labour.
Capital is a bully; and the reason it seldom dares to use its fists
on organised labour is because strikes have warned it that little
Labour is ready to hit back. Labour has sometimes got the worst of
previous encounters; but it is its past pluck and its present
readiness which ensure its future safety.
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