Cultivating Class Consciousness in a New Generation:
The Labor Guild of Youth in Melbourne 1926–28

Judith Smart

This article examines the inspiration and origins of the Labor Guild of Youth, formed as a section of the Australian Labor Party in Victoria in 1926. It also traces the progress of the organisation, analysing its membership, leadership, aims and objectives, educational and social activities and the reasons for its failure to develop a large following. The main purpose of the paper, however, is to investigate the significance of the establishment of a youth organisation that had the specific objective of encouraging class consciousness and identity rather than the conservative patriotic citizenship that predominated in most of the other youth movements that proliferated in early twentieth-century Melbourne. While acknowledging forerunners like the Socialist Sunday School, the paper will argue that the Labor Guild of Youth was indicative of the transition from middle-class paternalist organisations established for adolescents to ones that acknowledged and supported greater independence and a larger degree of self-governance. The difficulties and contradictions involved in this process, as well as the tensions arising from attempts to combine pleasure and leisure with political ambition, and the different objectives of 'hand' and 'brain' workers, are themes integral to the analysis and conclusions about the Guild's historical significance and fate. So too are the male-gendered but unspoken assumptions built into the labour movement and its associated organisations, despite the mixed membership of the Guild. The principal sources used are Labor Call, the minutes of the Guild and Labor Youth but the study will be placed in the context of research on the organisation of youth by others in the 1920s, including conservative political parties and pioneers in the field like the YWCA and the YMCA.

In the conclusion to his ground-breaking work, The Generation of 1914 , Robert Wohl writes that 'the rise of generational consciousness was one of the side effects of the coming of mass society. It was, like the concept of class, a form of collectivism and determinism, but one that emphasised temporal rather than socioeconomic location '.1 It arose later than class and was, he argues, the result of the changing relationship between fathers and sons as the industrial revolution made the passing down of knowledge seem redundant, encouraged mobility for the young, reduced regional identity and extended the availability of formal education.2 ohl's work focuses on the youth of the middle classes but, while the process he describes occurred later among the working-class young, it was nevertheless evident by the early twentieth century. As such, generational consciousness was a phenomenon that was seen to compete with and therefore threaten organisations explicitly based on class loyalty. If, as contemporaries believed, the identities of the coming generation were indeed primarily age based, the future of the organised labour movement would be bleak.	1
That there was some growing awareness of the need to focus separately on attracting young workers into the movement in Australia and cultivating in them a sense of class consciousness is evident in the expansion of youth organisation in the Labor Party and on the left generally in the interwar years. But the question of whose interests such organisations were to serve—movement or members—and whether it was possible for them to serve both, was always at least implicit. Another issue, that of gender, was raised scarcely at all in these discussions about youth and class organisation. The same is true of the historiography. Wohl's analysis of generations, like most of the historical literature on youth and youth organisations devoted to that period, is overwhelmingly male centred.3 In this context, the extent to which the comparative silence of interwar labour youth organisation on matters of gender was based on an inherent understanding of the movement's and members interests as masculine must be considered. Encompassing both these issues are the problems involved in defining collective identities, building an organisation on the assumption of their stability, and the tensions that arise from attempting to combine them, manipulate them or substitute one such identity for another.	2
Foundations
The Victorian Labor Guild of Youth (VLGY), 1926 28, was a shortlived attempt by the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party to engage with the challenge of a self-conscious and assertive younger generation and the issue of citizenship, so prominent in public discourse in the 1920s, as well to promote the movement's central rationale, working-class interest. Its forerunners included the Victorian Socialist Party's (VSP) Socialist Sunday School, based on English models, its Girls Callisthenics Club and Young Socialist Crusaders, and, in the 1920s, various Communist and Proletarian Sunday Schools, as well as the Young Communist League (YCL), launched in Brisbane and Sydney early in 1923, and the Young Comrades Clubs from 1926.4 The most successful of these in interwar Sydney and Melbourne was the YCL but not until the 1930s. The VLGY was the first of the mainstream Labor Party's youth organisations, though some of its members had grown up in the Socialist Sunday School and its founder, Muriel Heagney, consulted the VSP's Minnie Long, longterm organiser of the Sunday Schools, before suggesting the Guild of Youth to the ALP.5	3
The Guild inherited from the earlier socialist youth organisations an openly propagandist purpose, and restricted membership to those willing to pledge belief in 'the principles of the Labour Movement '.6 It was open to both sexes from the start though this did not mean its activities and operations were not gendered. ALP and Trades Hall sponsors wrote and spoke of it as 'a valuable adjunct to the Movement of Labor' and described its objective as 'to weld together an organisation which, whilst consolidating past gains, will lay the foundations upon which another generation will erect a great social structure in conformity with the ideals of the great Labour Movement'.7 The word 'conformity' was symptomatic. Like other groups established by the Labor Party, most notably the Women's Central Organising Committee, the terms of its foundation stipulated ultimate subordination in terms of policies, activities and procedures to the Victorian Central Executive.8 The resolution passed at the inaugural meeting on 19 October 1926 'affirm[ed] the formation in Victoria of an A.L.P. Youth Movement based on the ideals set out in the convening circular and in terms of the constitution proposed by the A.L.P. Central Executive '.9 But the Guild also drew on other traditions and influences, and some of these produced tensions between the ideals and expectations of its members and the reality of external supervision and constraint.	4
Muriel Heagney, representing the Clerks' Union, proposed the Guild of Youth to the ALP state conference in 1926. A supervisory body to implement the resolution and oversee the organisation's progress, the Labor Youth Movement Committee, was then established.10 In writing of her inspiration, Heagney employed some of the romanticised and sentimental high diction typical of late Victorian and Edwardian middle-class discourse on childhood and youth. For all that the Great War had made this style redundant and incongruous, there was as yet no alternative in common use, though the more self-consciously scientific language of educational psychology and professional youth work was making some inroads by the late 1920s. Though we may doubt that young working people used this language about themselves, it seems that the traditional, rather archaic form of address, sometimes with biblical allusions, remained common among trade union leaders. J.R. Chapple, President of the Australian Railways Union and chairman of the Youth Movement Committee, was perhaps rather more fulsome than most:	5
Hail, Glorious Youth! Your presence in the public arena has been an age-felt want; too long have the greybeards guided the destiny of man, too long have they been the architects of the Social Edifice which their clumsy hands and self-interested encrusted minds have despoiled—yea, for much too long have they brought misery upon this earth of ours ... Yours is the duty to reconstruct our Economic System, to place King Reason on the Throne This, then, is your task O Youth; and may loyalty to your cause inspire in you the accomplishment of your historic mission.11
The name for the new organisation Heagney proposed followed the tradition of nostalgia for old communal identities characteristic of non-Marxist English labour and guild socialist nomenclature, with its distaste for industrialism and materialist values and its self-conscious recall of mediaeval community and modes. Much of this came from her experiences in Britain and Europe between 1923 and 1925, where she studied various new youth movements, mainly labour based, and spent time 'with these young folk', whose summer program was devoted to 'games, boating, swimming, summer schools and rambles '. In winter, she reported to Labor Call , they typically turned to 'dramatic societies, choir work, study circles, gymnasium, and general propaganda activities '. 'What has been done by the youth of Middle Europe and England can surely be done by our Australian boys and girls ', she concluded, citing in support the words of the young editor of Flame , the journal of Britain's Independent Labour Party's (ILP) Guild of Youth:	6
The curse of our civilisation is that it deprives the worker of a full and joyful life ... We in the Guild of Youth know that desire, and are determined to wrest some beauty and happiness out of our everyday lives ... We want to sing and dance, to play games, to get into the country and understand all the wonders of life, to read, to act plays, to create beautiful things.12
Referring to the ILP Guild as 'typical ', Heagney gave the Victorian ALP's new youth group the same name. And, in appealing to young people of both sexes to enrol, she used the same self-consciously raised and romantic form of speech as the young woman she had quoted:
In England, Central Europe, Russia, Japan and even in ancient China, Youth Movements of a beautiful, complete and idealistic character hold sway. Normal youthful needs of recreation and gaiety are provided for with a happy intermingling of opportunities for serious questioning of social values and study Youths and Maidens on the threshold of life, will you join one with another in the Guild of Youth to make this world a better and fairer setting for the children of the future—your children?13
A similar romantic nostalgia was embedded in the preoccupations of the leaders and the activities of contemporary non-labour youth organisation in Australia, most notably the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, with their semi-escapist emphasis on camping, woodcraft, drill, games and outdoor jollity.14 But, for all that they were cloaked in the language and ritual of tradition and anti-urbanism, these were predominantly modern organisations, manifesting the typical and divergent characteristics of freedom and constraint and hence emphasising, as in contemporary education discourse, the desirability of self-governance in training for citizenship. This was also made explicit in the rationale articulated for the Labor Guild of Youth by Trades Hall Council secretary E.J. Holloway as 'an excellent instrument for the training of young people in the "Real Duties of Citizenship "'.15 An article on The State and the Citizen' in Labor Call summed up the labourist idea of these 'real duties of citizenship' in these terms:	7
The ideal State cannot be built up on laws imposed on a people. It is right for the State to curtail the liberty of the subject in the interest of the great majority of the people ... but ... the citizens of an ideal State, convinced that they must play their parts as citizens, will do so out of love of the State, which is an expression of themselves, the larger individual—an extension of the ego ... Instinctively, the citizen feels that he has a part to play in the making of the State, and he desires to play that part, not on compulsion, but as the free citizen of a free State, with a pride in shaping its laws and determining its destiny.16
Muriel Heagney, like so many other women reformers of the period, whether of the left, the right or avowedly non-political, believed important changes had taken place in the expectations of young men and women in the 1920s. For a start, she observed that, in the wake of the transformation wrought by war in Europe, there had been a 'merging of middle-class youth with the young workers' and that out of the 'melting pot' a 'new philosophy of life is emerging ', emphasising the common interests of the postwar generation regardless of class. Heagney argued that middle-class youth and students could contribute 'knowledge and experience' and articulateness to conferences and debates if their idealism could be directed into progressive organisations. At the same time, it was even more essential to make sure the energies of labour youth were not diverted into nonpolitical or non-progressive associations and pursuits, for there was plenty of competition emerging—from the cinema, cafés and bars, and the contemporary 'dance craze' in particular.17 The president of the Trades Hall Council, W.J. Duggan, was aware of this: 'Modern life ... is full of distractions, which divert the mind of young people from the more serious aspects of life. Something is necessary to arrest the attention of youth '.18 In England the Conservative Party had begun to mobilise young people, and there were signs of rival political youth groups developing in Victoria too.19 The leading conservative women's group, the Australian Women's National League, resolved at its annual conference in early October to form girls' branches' as a means of educating the young people to take up their public duties in the interests of their country ... and to enable them to be ready to carry on the work in the future that has been done ... by the League in the past '.20 The renewed urgency felt by the League in the wake of the Guild of Youth's inaugural meeting was elaborated in its journal, Woman , a couple of months later:	8
[E]very girl should become interested in politics, for politics is the life of our country They should learn to feel that they are responsible for putting the power to legislate into the hands of those who will work for the good of the whole, and not a section of the people That the value of beginning with the very young is appreciated by the extreme socialistic party is shown by the formation of the Labour Guild of Youth in Melbourne The urgency to counteract this evil influence constitutes one good reason for establishing girls branches of this league.21
In this more explicitly politicised context of youth organisation, Heagney had already recognised the inadequacy of the earlier Socialist Sunday School morality models of organisation and stressed instead the new self-consciously democratic and self-determining approach of the postwar professional youth worker. As with the New Education to which the Victorian Education Department under Director Frank Tate had paid lip service for some years, the emphasis in the rhetoric was on freedom, individual development of the whole person, enjoyment and initiative—the basis of self-directed citizenship.22 Adults might guide but not control. Accordingly, Heagney announced:	9
This Guild of Youth is unique. Every other organisation for young people has been handed to them ready-made by older folk. But here is a glorious opportunity for youth to make and mould an organisation according to its own conception of what is necessary for a complete and happy social life, combined with service to humanity.23
For all this hyperbole about the Guild's uniqueness, there were local as well as international models to which Heagney owed some acknowledgement. Her contacts with influential non-party women were wide, though necessarily informal because of ALP proscription of their organisations, and she learned much from their discussion and experiences of organising young women. She applied these ideas, albeit selectively and without reference to gender, to the Guild of Youth proposal and they guided her as secretary/treasurer during the first eight months of its operation. Failure to emphasise the issue of gender seems remarkable at first glance, given her primary interest in the accessibility of women to paid work, their conditions and the principle of equal pay. But, like many women in the labour movement, Heagney was not first and foremost a feminist. Discrimination against women workers was a labour issue before it was a feminist one and Heagney remained suspicious of middle-class feminism's lack of class analysis. Nevertheless, she was willing to draw on the experience of other women and the most important of the local youth organisations she observed, regardless of gender, was the Young Women's Christian Association.24 Indeed, in her notes in Labor Call the week after the Guild of Youth was launched, she described in detail the pageant of Youth and Health the YWCA was arranging for Health Week in November. This included a lengthy quote from secretary Miss E.D. Hardie about the importance of 'wholeness of life' to the future health of the nation and the necessity for young people in all sorts of occupations to have opportunities to develop mind and personality as well as physique.25	10
It was the YWCA that actually led the way in the direction of self-governance and in acknowledgment of the 'greater independence and freedom of the girl'26 and young people generally, the mingling of young men and women of all classes in public places, and the popularity of new forms and locales of entertainment and leisure such as dancing, the cinema, public bathing, cafés and bars. In 1925, the YWCA council decided to seek co-operation with the YMCA in:	11
providing opportunities for boys and girls (or young men and women) to meet, and to get to know each other under healthy surroundings and conditions, [for] the standards of boy and girl relationships would be considerably raised if they were able to come together, not only to play but in classes and lectures, and perhaps by uniting in community service.27
The president a year earlier had also commented on the dance craze that, as it had become 'one of the most popular modes of recreation ', the association should 'see that it is made a healthy and happy [one] '. 'With a youth buoyant, free and expectant ', she asked, 'how can we hope to give an abundant life by a process of restriction and prohibition?' Their object should be, rather, 'growth and expression '. 28 A beginning had been made in 1923 with the establishment of a semi-autonomous Girl Citizens' Council, which elected its own office bearers and representatives to the YWCA governing body, and was reinforced a year later by the granting of complete independence to the Senior Club girls for those over 20 years of age.29
In this context, it is not surprising that the four 'purposes' assigned to the Labor Guild of Youth by its charter (approved by the Central Executive in September 1926) included, in addition to 'service' and 'propaganda' , injunctions to the 'furtherance of culture' and the 'creation of a social centre, permeated with Labor idealism, where young workers may meet for amusement and recreation '. However, the granting of self-governance, for all Heagney's boasts, was conditional. Although it was a key principle of organisation that only members between the ages of 16 and 25 could vote (though older members could hold office), the Guild found its actual operational autonomy was constrained by ALP branch rules, and the charter conferred on it allowed merely for the drawing up of by-laws.30 Moreover, the initial constitution was decided only in part by the Guild itself (in conjunction with the Youth Movement Committee) and, in any case, all such documents were subject to Central Executive approval.31 Members did not at first question the prescribed purposes and procedures. The minutes record that they did resist the suggestion of an assistant secretary appointed by the Youth Movement Committee, though, as Heagney reminded them, the committee retained an overseeing role since it was bound by the ALP conference to establish the Guild fully in accordance with the resolution carried and to act in an advisory capacity.32	12
Within a short period, there were obvious tensions, however. They arose first over the relative importance of politics, culture and social activity and related conflict between idealists and pragmatists, and, second, over the precise role of the Youth Movement Committee in relation to the Guild's governance. These issues were to some extent gendered as well as generational. And, for all the spreading conviction that age-based identity had supplanted class, they also reflected differences between 'hand and brain workers' those who were waged workers and those from more privileged backgrounds who were still at school or members of the university Labor Club.33 Some were also members of long-established labour movement families, where they had been inducted into the principles and precepts of class politics; some of them had attended the Socialist Sunday school too.	13
The honour roll of foundation members, which included all those under 26 who had joined before the end of 1926, comprised 115 individuals. Ray Sutton's analysis indicates the average age was 20. Further examination of the figures shows there were 48 girls and 67 boys—41.7 per cent and 58.3 per cent respectively. Of the girls or young women, 8 (16.7 per cent) were or had recently been university students or were teachers, while 6 (12.5 per cent) were still at school—just over 29 per cent altogether. Of the boys or young men, 12 (17.9 per cent) were or had recently been university students or were teachers (and in one case a 'parson' ), and 4 (nearly 6 per cent) were still at school—just under 24 per cent altogether.34 My estimate is that only 19 (7.8 per cent) of all the occupations listed, male and female, could be classified as unskilled or blue-collar work and most of them (14) were male. The remaining 66 individuals (57.4 per cent of the total) can be loosely categorised as skilled or white-and pink-collar workers.35 Up to August 1927 there was a steady influx of new members, 49 in all, of whom 19 (38.8 per cent) were female, but, despite, a conscientious attempt to recruit members from factories, it is hard to identify more than 9 (18.4 per cent) as unskilled or blue-collar workers—an increase certainly but not enough to alter the socio-cultural character of the membership as a whole.36	14
The Relative Importance of Politics, Culture and Social Activity
Arguments about the relative importance of political, cultural and social activities developed within months. At the inaugural meeting, it was agreed that the election of office bearers be postponed till after a social outing for the purpose of getting to know each other better. About 70 attended this 'rally' at Sandringham on a Saturday afternoon and evening at the end of October, during which the purposes of the Guild were discussed and some time was spent in study circles.37 Not surprisingly, when the next meeting elected office bearers and committee members, the ''brain-workers'' were represented well out of proportion to their numbers in the Guild as a whole. This obvious fact caused two of the three committee members to resign soon after, when they realised or were told that it was not politic that the university Labour Club should have such overwhelming influence.38 Nevertheless, in the first year of the Guild's existence, key figures such as university student Ralph Gibson and teacher Mary Lazarus (president and vice-president respectively) dominated debate and direction, along with other such individuals like Winston Rhodes, Claire Anderson, Claire Stewart, Charles Silver and Lloyd Edmonds, whether or not they were on the executive committee. 'brain-workers' held five of the nine leading positions in the musical, dramatic and political study groups as well dominating the magazine committee.39 Predictably, it was only on the social committee that the teachers and students give way to 'hand-workers' and that the majority of members were women.40 The 'brain-workers' preference for abstract theorising, lectures and elevating cultural discussion did not go entirely unchallenged, but this and their uncertainty and awkwardness in relation to popular entertainment and social activity did not encourage the more diverse membership that was needed to establish the Guild as representative of all sections of labour youth. And the alternatives suggested by those who did offer a challenge tended to alienate young working women while failing to bring in young working men in substantial numbers.	15
The early leaders—teachers and students—were inclined to write in the Edwardian sentimentalised high diction I have alluded to, as illustrated in the poetry and articles they published in the two editions of Labor Youth the Guild produced in 1926 and 1927 and in the lectures and discussions reported in Labor Call. Winston Rhodes' poem 'Labor Youth' appeared on the inside front cover of the first issue of Labor Youth. . In analysing the Guild's inspiration, Sutton has quoted the first stanza but the second stanza perhaps captures more fully the romantic idealism and impatience of young students, as well as the traditionalist forms of expression replete with classical allusions—they had imbibed in the curriculum of their extended schooling:	16
Hark to the travail of people oppressed and remember O Youth! Hark to the tumult and war-greed, then thunder the message afar, Bursting the sleepy-eyed buds into crimson-crowned bloom with thy Truth. Dotage has blundered for centuries, thine be the last avatar! Breaker of images thou (Born with revolt on thy brow), Shatter those idols that must Crumble from falsehood to dust, Uproot the privileged pride and the worship of Mammon and Lust.41
Similar efforts came from the pen of high school student Nellie Stewart, and more yearning, nature-inspired pieces like Ralph Gibson's 'The Song of the Wanderer' evoked the prewar German Wandervogel movement. University student Alice Stewart wrote a more directly political essay on 'The Position of Woman' but it was not grounded in experience or empirical research, quoting instead large chunks from Olive Schreiner's and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's theories about the debilitating effects of marriage on women and the advantages of socialised housework and child-rearing in an ideal world order. Not surprisingly, this provoked a satirical response from bank clerk Les Withers, who argued in the second issue of the journal that 'the new age which brings in its train the economic freedom of Woman does not appear to be unattended with disadvantages ', and pointed to some of the practical difficulties involved in communal and socialised living, ending with a plaintive appeal to 'old truths' and love '.42
The 'hand-workers' tended to be more prosaic and practical than the 'brain-workers' , though not necessarily less idealistic. Because they were less burdened with tradition, they also sounded more modern. When the organisation was still being discussed in October 1926, one 22-year-old young woman wrote to Muriel Heagney: 'I think there is a tendency for a thing like this to be too sentimental.Youth (to be rather crude) is the time for enthusiasm, and most people simply let it off in vaporings. The Youth Movement should therefore aim at organising and directing that enthusiasm '. She did not offer any concrete suggestions but, significantly, added 'I hope it will be as popular as the Green Mill ', a reference to the well-known contemporary music and dance venue for the young on the south bank of the Yarra.43 An outspoken young plumber, Frank Courtnay, was clearly impatient with the more romantic 'vaporings' and with activities and issues he regarded as marginal to the 'real' interests of working-class youth, arguing very early against lengthy and learned lectures, which, he said, 'would not appeal to the industrial worker—he doesn't want culture! He must be attracted by the social side, and means for his pleasure and enjoyment created '. The purpose of the organisation was clear in his mind: it 'should be a training ground for future members of the A.L.P.' and to achieve that end must be made 'attractive to the industrial worker'.44 Lectures were the wrong way to go about it, even when on subjects of direct relevance like the Redistribution of Seats Bill suggested by university student Bob Fraser, who argued this was more important than music and dancing and would serve to train Guild members as speakers in the coming state election campaign.45 It was true that lectures like the one on 'Culture' by university student Rona Blogg had produced no discussion at all among those present at an early meeting, Heagney tactfully suggesting in her report that 'perhaps members felt somewhat shy in addressing themselves to such an informed paper without time for reflection or preparation '.46 Courtnay himself made his point somewhat heavy-handedly in the first edition of Labor Youth with 'A Lunch-hour Story ', an unlikely yarn about mosquitoes with no political point to it at all except an implied one about the level of humour and cultural interests of real workers.47	17
Courtnay's assertive philistinism failed to meet unanimous approval among his fellow 'hand-workers' , however, and his aggressively masculine style did not endear him to many of the young working women, one of whom protested that his attack on 'culture' did not represent 'the girls' point of view '. A 23-year old dressmaker herself and therefore, she claimed, an industrial worker, Eileen Sinclair alluded to the middle-class aspirations of her fellow workers, who, she said, 'wanted culture and refinement' and 'refused to be associated with the Labor Party, and voted Nationalist, because they thought the Labor Party had no culture or ideals '.48 For them, the projected AWNL girls branches might have proved an effective counter-attraction. Ivy Ferrie, a 16-year old clerk, perhaps made the class and gender issues clearest, however, in a concise and well-researched article on 'Juvenile Labor '. Her analysis put the posturings of Courtnay to shame and showed up Stewart's ideas as academic abstractions, as well as demonstrating to Eileen Sinclair some very real limitations on what working-class girls (and perhaps also boys) could hope for in the context of inadequate vocational training and opportunities for 'mental and physical development '.49 Motor trimmer George Gwynne wrote of just such frustrations for young men in 'My Hopes ': 'It is not the actual conditions of factory life which cause that feeling of discontent; it is the feeling one gets that he has come to a dead-end '. But the Guild of Youth gave him hope of rising to something better .	18
We young people can help to educate each other, relate each other's experiences, attend debates, lectures, etc., thereby enlightening ourselves and preparing ourselves to take an active part in our country's affairs.50
A later article by Ivy Ferrie, 'The Cinema as Propaganda ', in the second issue of Labor Youth , could be seen as an example of just such possibilities for the self-enlightenment and culture Gwynne and Eileen Sinclair hoped the Guild would provide.51
Attempts were made to accommodate all interests in the Guild's activities in order 'to secure the active cooperation of every single member'52 but the result was a tendency towards separation and loss of focus or purpose rather than unity in diversity. Although lectures continued to be part of the program, they were restricted largely to important people or strictly controlled in terms of time speakers were allowed. Sometimes they were replaced by short talks, not necessarily on matters political, by members of the Guild itself.53 Songs were to be part of each meeting, regular performances of the dramatic and musical groups were included, some hikes and picnics wee organised, and monthly dances were planned.54 After the first six months, members also voted to make every second gathering a social one; simple games, competitions and singing provided the usual entertainment fare on these occasions, just when most young people were turning to more sophisticated amusements like the cinema or dancing. At the same time, Frank Courtnay and Alfred Watt, a young carpenter who early allied himself with Courtnay's views, bluntly raised the 'question of the general meeting being spoiled by a small group who did all the talking and bored the members '.55 Speaking and writing skills were always a potential source of resentment and rivalry. When Bob Fraser and Phil Edmonds waxed enthusiastic about Guild members offering their services as speakers for the state election campaign, Courtnay and Ivy Withecombe, a milliner, were quick to point out that 'there were many ways of assisting the Movement other than speaking from the platform '.56	19
Frank Courtnay's continuing efforts to align the organisation to what he perceived to be the interests of industrial workers were also reflected in his attack on the magazine. The dances, he argued, were more successful than Labor Youth , and the debts of the former should be paid before those of the latter.57 The fact was that neither was successful. An addendum to the financial report at the end of April 1927 showed that only the first dance had made a profit and that the first issue of the magazine lost £13/6/6 (the second issue was not included in these accounts).58 Late in May, the Guild resolved that the executive and the social committee should review the position with regard to the dances, which clearly did not measure up to the standard of the Green Mill. And in June the magazine committee reported it was not continuing with production of a third issue of Labor Youth. 59	20
A clear change of direction is evident from mid-1927. The student and teacher representation among the office bearers declined with the election of a new executive, including Courtnay as president, at the annual general meeting in July.60 It was almost a clean sweep of the previous executive. Though 'brain-workers' still predominated, only one—Alice Stewart—belonged to the university Labor Club. As a result, the previously persistent if muted conflict between the 'brain-workers' and the self-constituted spokesmen for the 'hand-workers' declined as the latter became ascendant. Ralph Gibson left for further studies in England not long after, and few of the old executive or committee members, apart from the Edmonds brothers (Phil and Lloyd), Charlie Silver and Alice Stewart, maintained their interest. Politics certainly did not disappear from the Guild meeting program—if anything there was more political discussion—but the issues increasingly reflected utilitarian concerns and more conventional party and ideological divisions between conservatives and radicals rather than the abstract intellectual, cultural and philosophical aspects of political discourse. The class and gender tensions that had made the Guild lively though never large were replaced by little more than the old industrial versus political wing conflicts. For all Courtnay's earlier emphasis on the social and entertainment side of youth organisation, dances, hikes and picnics seem to have become rarer, and the musical and drama groups also faded away, though Courtnay's Northcote ALP branch helped revive a drama circle early in 1928, which performed largely apolitical one-act comedies. The self-directed political study groups disappeared too, participation having fallen to about 25 by July 1927.61 The only one to operate in 1928 (on the materialist conception of history) was directed by Victorian Labor College tutor M. Hart. There were some serious discussions about communist influence in the labour movement at meetings following argumentative lectures on 'The Case for the Left Wing' and 'Why I support the Right Wing' in the second half of 1927. From April 1927, formal debates had also become more frequent, both internally and against other organisations such as the university Liberal Club, the Junior Teachers branch of the Victorian Teachers' Union, various ALP branches and the Constitutional Club. Mostly they were about policy issues like arbitration, the White Australia Policy, motherhood endowment and profit-sharing, though some ventured into more general issues like 'the place of women in political and professional life '.	21
Apart from an occasional rebellious gesture like accepting the Communist Party's invitation to help celebrate the Russian Revolution, the Guild, it would seem, had become indistinguishable in its activities from any other ALP branch by 1928. There was little to attract young people to this sort of organisation, particularly young working women without ambition for personal advancement in the party or union movement or young people of either sex who maintained their idealism about the possibility of a different sort of political order and culture. The continuous growth in members in the first half of 1927 had been more apparent than real; by mid-1927 88 were financial but 64 were not.62 Average attendance at meetings had declined steadily from between 50 and 60 early in 1927 to 30 40 by the middle of the year, and 20 30 by the beginning of 192863 when Phil Edmonds was elected the new president. In April, the ALP Youth Committee reported 'a sense of disappointment at the slow growth of the Organisation' but saw the problem as a lack of 'suitable persons with organising experience and sufficient time to concentrate on the work ', rather than the lack of agreed purpose, focus and autonomy that should have been patent to any interested observer.64 Although it took some time for the confusion about direction to be evident, the blindspot in the party on the question of autonomy was obvious from the outset.	22
Guild Governance and the Matter of Autonomy
While the Central Executive was anxious to mobilise youth, and its representatives repeated the rhetoric about the hope of the future lying with the idealism of the young, a corresponding anxiety to constrain and channel youthful energy in the service of the labour movement's existing policies and heritage meant that the Executive was reluctant to relinquish control. It was an ongoing source of frustration to members that the Guild had no direct representation on the Executive and communication was mediated through the Youth Movement Committee, whose members were appointed by the Executive and therefore had no formal responsibility to the Guild. Reaching resolution of the conflict between three levels of authority—the Guild executive, the Youth Movement Committee (and Central Executive), and ALP branch rules—did not prove simple. The position of Muriel Heagney, who had been appointed honorary organiser of the Guild by the party, irritated a significant number of members too. Officially she represented the Central Executive and the Youth Movement Committee, though she was also formally elected to the position of secretary/treasurer at the Guild meeting of 3 November 1926, alongside the rest of its executive committee.	23
The Heagney position was a direct consequence of the larger issue of autonomy and authority and was more easily dealt with. Almost from the beginning, Heagney's loyalties were perceived to be divided. The first issue that made this evident to many members of the Guild arose early in December when a general meeting agreed to invite representatives of the Nationalist Party, as well as the industrial and political wings of the labour movement, to address them.65 At the following meeting, however, Muriel Heagney informed members that the Central Executive had advised her that 'it was contrary to the policy of the Labour Movement to have Nationalist speakers at Guild or other such meetings '.66 When she revealed she had written to the Executive seeking a ruling on the issue, Alf Watt, a carpenter, and Alan Bird, an engineer, moved that the 'meeting register its disapproval of the Secretary's action ', both arguing that she was 'duty bound' to carry out the directions of the members as decided. Heagney's defence—that the ALP Constitution was supreme and the Guild could not go outside the Constitution'—provoked sympathy from university student Claire Anderson, who quoted Kipling that 'we had scarcely found ourselves' and should acknowledge that 'Muriel Heagney was elected with certain discretionary powers, and bigger questions should engage our attention '. These two rather lofty responses and the Guild executive's acquiescence in Heagney's action produced indignation from the rank and file, who passed Watt and Bird's motion.67	24
Similarly, a month later, when Heagney counselled against sending representatives to a Communist Party function to commemorate the death of Lenin on the grounds that the Central Executive 'would probably refuse such an invitation ', the meeting repudiated her advice and agreed to send Watt and Victor Webster.68 The earlier conflict had already prompted the Guild to deal with the larger issue by setting up a committee of five 'to inqui[r]e into the relationship of the group to the C.E. of the A.L.P., the Trades Hall, and the duties of the Secretary and other constitutional points '.69 The majority of members elected this time were 'hand-workers' , none of them on the Guild executive.70 It was clear that practical questions of power, and clarity over who should exercise it, were their primary concerns, above and beyond the abstract questions of philosophy and the romantic idealism of the student leaders.	25
Although the committee teased out the issues and made recommendations, basic sources of dispute remained unresolved. The specific problem of Muriel Heagney was easily dealt with, however, by abrogation of the right to move motions or hold office beyond the age of 30 (voting beyond the age of 25 was already prohibited). Heagney, at 41, was well beyond both age limits. The relationship with the ALP Central Executive was, perforce, left in limbo. Officers of the Central Executive consulted believed the key recommendation that the Guild Executive should 'interpret the constitution of the Guild according to its letter and spirit' might have to be modified.71 71 The Guild meeting of 2 February endorsed the review committee's recommendations but while the party Central Executive delayed a formal ruling on the constitutionality of this decision tensions continued to simmer. In addition, Heagney's position in the Guild was further undermined and relations between the Guild and the Youth Movement Committee poisoned by revelations that the committee had been paying for Heagney's services as organiser. Though it was soon made clear that this was only for a 'short period' when she had been organising secretary of the Youth Movement Committee, not during her tenure as Guild secretary/treasurer, the monetary link tainted her reputation among Guild members.72 At the elections of mid-1927, Heagney was ineligible to stand under the new constitution and the office she had held was now, against her advice, split into separate secretarial and treasury functions.73 Thus was the inspiration behind the Guild removed from any formal position of influence within it. None expressed regret at the time, though Charles Silver and Lloyd Edmonds—'brain-workers' both—did so many years later when interviewed by Ray Sutton.74	26
The larger constitutional position vis-a-vis the ALP Central Executive did not change until well into the following year—1928. By this time the decline in membership had become irreversible. But only then did the Youth Movement Committee accept the recommendation of the Guild itself that there should be a joint organising committee responsible to the Central Executive of the party, five to be elected by the ALP Annual Conference and five by the Guild of Youth. 'By this means ', the report continued, 'it might be possible to combine the enthusiasm of the youth with the organising experience of older people '.75 The tone was still paternalist and even this concession was too late. For all the Youth Movement Committee's protestations that there had been no external interference in Guild policies or activities, VLGY members had lost any sense of autonomy and with it their enthusiasm, vigour and hope.76 No formal decision was ever made to wind the organisation up. Members were still making plans for yet another social or dance at the Guild's last recorded meeting in October.77 It seems, then, simply to have faded away.78	27
Over the ensuing years, some of the Guild's young philosophers and theorists found their way into the Communist Party,79 while other members pragmatically accepted the realities of ALP branch membership, rules and procedures. Many withdrew from political involvement altogether. But the failure of the Victorian Labor Guild of Youth is not without significance or instruction. Contradictory motivations remained unresolved; those who talked loudest about the liberating potential of youth were also those most concerned to constrain it in the service of armies drawn according to the old battle lines rather than risking genuinely new alliances and possibilities for action. Ideals have almost always given way to the pragmatics of power in the Labor Party. But, in any case, youth, for all the rhetoric of the 1920s, had been unable to provide a coherent organising rationale in a society still fractured more by class, educational opportunities, race and gender than age. Claims about the distinctiveness of youth only added another discursive contribution to the disparate fragments of identity among which no effective accommodation had yet proved possible.	28
Endnotes 1. Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1979, p. 207. 2. Ibid. , pp. 206 7. 3. For example: J. Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society , Croom Helm, London, 1977; John R. Gillis, Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations 1770 Present , Academic Press, New York and London, 1974; David Maunders, Keeping Them off the Streets: A History of Voluntary Youth Organizations in Australia 1850 1980 , Phillip Institute of Technology, Melbourne, 1984; Robert Van Krieken, Children and the State: Social Control and the Formation of Australian Child Welfare , Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1991; Martin Crotty, Making the Australian Male: Middle-Class Masculinity 1870-1920 , Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2001. 4. On all these organisations, see the excellent analysis by Ray Sutton, Labour Movement Youth Organisation and Policy in Eastern Australia, c. 1918 c. 1939, PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1990, chap. 1. 5. Ralph Gibson interview, cited in ibid. , p. 32. 6. Constitution, VLGY Minutes, 3 November 1926, Merrifield Collection, SLV LaTrobe Collection, MS 13045, Box 97; Muriel Heagney, 'The Labor Guild of Youth What It Is! ', pamphlet, in Merrifield Collection, loc. cit. 7. D.L. McNamara (MLC and General Secretary of the ALP) and W.J. Duggan (President of the Trades Hall Council) in comments appended to Heagney, 'The Labor Guild of Youth What It Is!' 8. The first Women's Organising Committee was disbanded by the Victorian Central Executive in 1913 because of its demands for greater autonomy as well as formal representation on the executive. It was re-formed as the Women's Central Organising Committee in 1917, with a constitution, approved in 1918, that stipulated conformity to the Central Executive in policy and all other matters. See Melanie Raymond, 'Labour Pains: Women in the Unions and Labor Party in Victoria, 1888-1918 ', Lilith , no. 5, Winter 1988, pp. 41 51, and ALP (Victoria) Conference Minutes, 29 March 1918 1 April 1918.. 9. VLGY Minutes, 19 October 1926. 10. Sutton, Labour Movement Youth Organisation, p. 60. See also Labor Call , 28 October 1926, p. 8, which lists the members of the Youth Movement Committee as, in addition to Heagney, Mrs F.J. Riley, and Messrs J.F. Chapple, A. Calwell, A.E. Davis, E.W. Peters, A.R. Loft, W. Russell, J.J. Holland, MLA, and M.M. Blackburn, MLA. 11. Labor Youth , December 1926, p. 21. 12. Labor Call , 14 October 1926, p. 8. 13. Heagney, 'The Labor Guild of Youth What It Is!' Emphasis in original.. 14. See Maunders, Keeping Them off the Streets, chap. 4, and Crotty, Making the Australian Male , chap. 7. 15. Labor Youth , December 1926, p. 28. 16. Labor Call , 19 August 1926, p. 7. The article was by a regular contributor, Walter Greig. 17. Labor Call , 14 October 1926, p. 8 . 18. Comments appended to Heagney, The Labor Guild of Youth What It Is! 19. Labor Call , 14 October 1926, p. 8. 20. Wo an , 1 December 1926, p. 299. 21. Wo an , 1 December 1926, p. 299. 22. On Tate and the principles of the New Education, see R.J.W. Selleck, Frank Tate: A Biography , Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1982, and The New Education:The English Background 1870 1914 , Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Melbourne, 1968. 23. Heagney,' The Labor Guild of Youth What It Is!' 24. The YWCA had moved to a less explicitly evangelical and more liberal approach to youth organisation during the war years in Britain, though not without conflict and schism, and the World's YWCA followed suit in the postwar years. See Angel Woolacott, 'From Moral to ProfessionalAuthority: Secularism, Social Work, and Middle-class Women's Self-construction in World War I Britain ', Journal of Women's History , vol. 10, no. 2, Summer 1998, pp. 85 ff. 25. Labor Call , 21 October 1926, p. 8. 26. YWCA Echoes , no. 97, 1 September 1921, p. 1; 27. Melbourne Girl , 1 November 1925, p. 12. 28. Melbourne Girl , 1 November 1924, p. 13. 29. YWCA Echoes , no. 121, 1 October 1923, p. 3; Melbourne Girl , 1 November 1925, p. 14. 30. Charter of the Labor Guild of Youth , Labor Youth , vol. 1, no. 1, 1926, inside back cover. 31. VLGY Minutes, 3 November 1926. 32. VLGY Minutes, 3 November 1926. Labor Call states that the constitution 'was adopted as submitted ', though after 'considerable discussion '. See Labor Call , 11 November 1926, p. 5. 33. Heagney's term for the two groups. See Labor Call , 25 November 1926, p. 8. On this division, see also Sutton, Labour Movement Youth Organisation, pp. 66 7, and N.W. Saffin, The Victorian Labour Guild of Youth 1926 8 , Labour History , no. 6, May 1964, pp. 38 42. 34. Calculated from Roll of Honor , Labor Youth , December 1926, p. 17, with some assistance for the women from Farley Kelly, Degrees of Liberation: A Short History of Women in the University of Melbourne , Women's Centenary Committee of the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1985, pp. 78 ff. 35. Calculated from 'Roll of Honor ', Labor Youth , December 1926, p. 17. Using a different type of categorisation, Sutton also concludes that skilled manual workers predominated and that clerks, teachers and students (which he defines as middle-class occupations) made up 45 per cent of members. See Sutton, Labour Movement Youth Organisation, p. 67. 36. VLGY Minutes, 18 January 1927 10 August 1927.. On arrangements to visit factories for recruitment, see entry for 13 April 1927. 37. At Minnie Longs' home.. See Labor Call , 11 November 1926, p. 5. 38. Winston Rhodes and Claire Anderson were replaced by Frank Courtnay, a plumber, and Ivy Withecombe, a milliner. Labor Call , 25 November 1926, p. 8; VLGY Minutes, 17 November 1926. 39. VLGY Minutes, 17 November 1926. 40. Eileen Sinclair (machinist), Moira Holland (clerk), Marjorie Tweedy (typiste), Ivy Bent (telephonist), and Ivy Withecombe (milliner). The two males were Charles Silver (student) and Lindsay Bent (railway employee). VLGY Minutes, 2 February 1927, and Roll of Honor, Labor Youth , vol. 1, no. 1, 1926, p. 17. 41. Labor Youth , vol. 1, no. 1, December 1926, inside front cover. 42. 'The Sad Position of Man ', Labor Youth , vol. 1, no. 2, 1927, p. 12. 43. Labor Call , 21 October 1926, p. 8. 44. Labor Call , 25 November 1926, p. 8. 45. VLGY Minutes, 1 December 1926. 46. Labor Call , 9 December 1926, p. 8. 47. Labor Youth , vol. 1, no. 1, 1926, p. 31. In the second issue of the journal, Courtnay wrote a more serious article, 'Exploited Youths ', relating his experiences 15 years earlier as a runner for the Herald , and drawing the unexceptionable moral that unionists should look after the conditions of young workers. But, as the editor of Labor Youth felt obliged to point out, Courtnay had not checked to see if conditions had changed in the intervening period. 48. Labor Call , 25 November 1926, p. 8; VLGY Minutes, 17 November 26. 49. Labor Youth , vol. 1, no. 1, 1926, p. 24. 50. Labor Youth , vol. 1, no. 1, 1926, p. 9. 51. Labor Youth , vol. 1, no. 2, 1927, pp. 11 12. 52. VLGY Minutes, 12 November 1926. 53. VLGY Minutes, 13 July 1927. 54. Labor Call , 25 November 1926, p. 8. 55. VLGY Minutes, 27 April 1927. 56. Report of meeting of 1 December 1926 in Labor Call , 9 December 1926, p. 8. 57. VLGY Minutes, 13 April 1927. 58. VLGY Minutes, 27 April, 1927. 59.. VLGY Minutes, 25 May 1927, and 8 June 1927. 60. VLGY Minutes, 13 July 1927. The other members of the executive were vice-president Winnie Bennett (teacher), secretary Alf Watt (carpenter), assistant secretary Ivy Ferrie (clerk), treasurer Les Withers (bank clerk), and committee members Lloyd Edmonds (teacher), Alice Stewart (university student), Jessie Smart (high school student). 61. Labor Call , 4 August 1927, p. 2. 62. Figures cited in Labor Call , 4 August 1927, p. 2, and VLGY Minutes, 13 July 1927. 63. The trends and conclusions discussed in this paragraph have been extrapolated from the VLGY Minutes, reports in Labor Call , and also from the activities of the Guildchronicled in Saffin, The Victorian Labour Guild of Youth 1926 8 . 64. Labor Call , 12 April 1928, p. 8. 65. VLGY Minutes, 1 December 1926. 66. VLGY Minutes, 15 December 1926. 67. Watt and Bird were both allies of Frank Courtnay, who was clearly uncomfortable with the acquiescence of the Guild executive but, in conformity with party rules, which he supported, felt unable to breach solidarity with his fellow executive members. He subsequently submitted, but soon after withdrew, his resignation. See VLGY Minutes, 15 December 1926, 2 February 1927. 68. Webster was a university student. VLGY Minutes, 18 January 1927. 69. Abbreviations in original resolution. VLGY Minutes, 15 December 1926. 70. Watt, Webster, Bob Williams (a teacher), Eileen Sinclair and Ivy Ferrie (VLGY Minutes, 15 December 1926). However, when the report was presented to the Guild the following February, it was also signed by President Ralph Gibson and Heagney herself (VLGY Minutes, Appendix, 2 February 1927). 71. VLGY Minutes, Appendix, 2 February 1927. 72. VLGY Minutes, 9 March 1927. 73. VLGY Minutes, 22 June 1927. 74. Sutton, Labour Movement Youth Organisation, p. 72. 75. Labor Call , 12 April 1928, p. 8. 76. See also judgement of Sutton, Labour Movement Youth Or anisation, p. 73. 77. VLGY Minutes, 3 October 1928. 78. See comments by Silvers and Edmonds in Sutton, Labour Movement Youth Organisation, pp. 73 4. 79. Notably Ralph Gibson, Charles Silver, Lloyd Edmonds, Mary Lazarus.

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