A Free Country by David Kemp
Author:David Kemp [Kemp, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780522873481
Google: UpLvvQEACAAJ
Amazon: 0522873480
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing
Published: 2019-01-15T01:06:15.142000+00:00
If Griffith had expressed himself unwisely before, he wanted to make clear that he did not believe there was an inherent conflict of interest in the industrial system. Indeed, he told the Royal Commission, ‘until the two parties recognise that their interests are common … there will be no end to these troubles’.90
The union violence against the pastoralists and against the non-unionised workers had caused community support for the strikers to evaporate. Their behaviour was far outside acceptable norms. The colonial governments were being backed not only by the employers but also, as the disruption worsened and violent incidents occurred, by middle-class voters. Parkes, not an advocate for the employers, considered the ‘state of things is little short of a revolution’.91 Even Alfred Deakin in Victoria, as Chief Secretary, had put mounted troops on alert lest the ‘criminal classes’ take advantage of the situation to create violent disorder.92 ‘There are sufficient worthless and ill-disposed people in any city of 400,000 inhabitants who would take advantage of a time of tumult and a weak executive to pillage innocent citizens,’ Deakin later said.93
The judgements in the Rockhampton trials set a precedent, and when, later in 1892, unionised miners at Broken Hill attempted to stop by force the mining companies using contract workers, strike leaders were arrested, tried, found guilty and imprisoned for conspiracy and the inciting of riots.
The utopian drive for the ‘cooperative’ society, which in its infancy had been hopeful and idealistic, was now embittered, entrenching within the labour movement the philosophy of conflict implicit in that campaign. ‘Class jealousy, class hatred, class prejudice and class bitterness secure the conviction of the prisoners,’ the Worker asserted.94 Those who had been assaulted and attacked during the strike might have used similar words about the motivations of the strikers. The idea of a peaceful transition to ‘national cooperation’ faded as the philosophy of class conflict gripped the labour movement and as it became inured to the cruelties of utopianism. The search for a new organisation of authority in industry intensified.
Equally, however, the response of the unions to the strikes—that political democracy was a solution to the problem of power-sharing—was to demonstrate the importance of democratic institutions and the rule of law to the continued peaceful development of the continent, and the basis on which a liberal nation might still be brought into being.
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