Editorial

This issue of Labour History is significant for two reasons. First, it is 40 years since the first number of journal was produced at the Australian National University in January 1961. Those embarking on the creation of the journal faced a range of challenges concerning the production process, finances and potential subscribers. A tribute to these early pioneers opens this issue. Second, from the November 2002 issue subscribers to the journal will have online access to Labour History as well as continuing to receive a hard copy. The journal will be part of a stable of historical journals that form the History Co-operative, which is administered by the University of Illinois Press. These journals include the American Historical Review and Labour/Le Travail. This arrangement allows the Society and the editorial board to retain control of the journal's content, while increasing the international profile and accessibility of the journal. There are several implications for subscribers. We will ask subscribers to provide an email when they renew their subscription to facilitate their access to the on-line version. There is a new library subscription rate which recognises that library borrowers will have greater access to the journal. All subscribers outside Australia and New Zealand will be required to pay in US dollars to minimise the cost of currency exchange in our dealings with the University of Illinois Press.	1
The first two articles in this issue look at the employment of Aboriginal labour in Australia. Shirlene Robinson analyses the experiences of Aboriginal children in Queensland many of whom were kidnapped, abused and unpaid for their labour. The author doubts whether substantial legislation would have protected these children since European officials would have been reluctant to enforce the laws. Mark Hannah investigates the employment of Aboriginal workers by the Australian Agriculture Company, which held vast pastoral leases. He argues that Aboriginal workers were the most productive employees of the Company.	2
The next three articles are on convict labour, youth politics and the Australian colonial experience in Papua New Guinea. Tom Dunning and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart study the issue of convict resistance by examining the Deloraine mutiny in Tasmania. Judith Smart explores the political mobilisation of youth by the Labor Party in Victoria in the late 1920s. The Labor Guild of Youth, unlike most other youth organisations of the period, fostered class consciousness and identity rather than conservative patriotic citizenship. There were problems with trying to combine leisure and political mobilisation, and also, despite the male and female membership of the Guild, there were male-gendered assumptions underlying the Guild's activities. Huntley Wright considers the impact of the Japanese invasion of the Australian territory of Papua New Guinea on Australian Labor Party colonial policy. The Labor Party shifted towards a view that regional security had to be linked to colonial reform which had an adequate basis of economic justice.	3
The final two articles by Andrew Moore and John McLaren contemplate the politics of Cold War Australia. In 1952 there was major controversy over the funding of Left-wing writers from the Commonwealth Literary Fund. Moore highlights the role of M.H. Ellis, anti-Communist journalist and historian, who conducted a political campaign against writers such as Marjorie Barnard and James Normington Rawling. John McLaren examines the 1959 Australian and New Zealand International Congress for Peace and Disarmament, held in Melbourne, which was the first major event of the Left after the splits in the ALP and the Communist Party in the 1950s. He challenges the perception that the Congress achieved a unity on the left in support of its aims and highlights new divisions that helped weaken Labor as a political force for the next decade.	4
This issue reintroduces the concept of the 'symposium' to Labour History . In number 12 of May 1967 a symposium on What is Labour History? was published that included contributions from Bede Nairn, Don Rawson, Terry Irving, Eric Fry and J.A. La Nauze. The current set of contributions arises from a symposium organised by Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney on 12 October last year. It is based on a paper by Elizabeth Faue, which examines developments in US labour historiography. Bradon Ellem, Melanie Oppenheimer, Lucy Taska and Chris Wright provide commentaries on the paper. Their contributions provide not only excellent insights into Liz's paper but also contain important reflections on comparative developments in Australian labour historiography.	5
In addition to the articles and the symposium, there is a range of other items to absorb our readers including our renowned book review section. There is a research essay by Hugh Anderson on 'Paddy: the Sydney Street Poet' and an obituary for Clem Lloyd by John Faulkner. This issue provides information on new resources for labour history—the web-based Australian Trade Union Archives and the Maritime Dispute Archive. Harry Knowles provides a report on the conference on 'Labouring Lives' held in Manchester last November.	6
Late last year there were some changes made to the editorial board. I would like to welcome the new members of the editorial board and thank all the members of the previous editorial board for their assistance and encouragement. The next issue of Labour History will have a thematic section on labour organising, which includes contributions from Australia, Canada and the US.	7
Greg Patmore

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.