Book Review

This book is based on a collection of conference papers which the editors have valiantly ordered into sections – issues, institutions, place and people – with a brief introduction to each section and an overview by Stuart Macintyre.	1
The introduction rehearses the demarcation lines in the historiography of the left – old, new and current. Macintyre argues that the capitalist position saw Federation as presenting barriers to labour attaining political power and that the main contribution of a ‘highly suspicious’ and unenthusiastic labour movement was to push the Federation movement towards a more democratic model than might otherwise have been the case. But if Labour was a reluctant player in the run up to a Federation which it saw as deflecting it from the main chance of working for improved workers conditions at the colonial level, it soon changed its tune. After astonishing itself by immediately holding the balance of power in both houses it increased its vote thereafter and was soon entrenched as a major party. Socialists might mourn the flight from the direct class warfare of the 1890s into parliamentary gradualism but the Labor Party and the big unions ‘embraced the national sentiment’ (p. 25) and worked actively to expand the powers of the federal sphere.	2
Within this framework, the enriching of traditional labour history scholarship through exploring connections with the diverse practices of social history is evident in this collection. There is a fair amount of revisiting of well-worn debates, with some new answers. Raelene Frances, in ‘Gender, Working Life and Federation’ leaves behind the arguments of earlier feminist scholars that emphasised the unequal treatment of men and women workers under the 1904 arbitration system, and through comparative work with Canadian historians, finds that Australian women probably fared better under this centralised system than under that country’s more laissez faire approach to wages. The chapters in the section ‘Place’, are concerned with the old question of what it was that motivated the voter at the referenda, but they argue that crude economic indicators will not yield the answers unless they are linked to an understanding of intellectual and social capital. In Glenda Strachan and Anne Dunne’s study of the little agrarian based town of Dungog, and Greg Patmore’s study of the manufacturing town of Lithgow, the actual and real interests of the citizens are only part of the stories which also involve articulate newspaper men, patriotism as ‘thrill’ and capital-labour compacts which preference the local above the nation. Lenore Layman deconstructs contemporary cartoons to illustrate both labour fears that the capitalist class was using the excuse of nationalism to side track the class struggle, and labour’s belief in ‘a classed nationalism’ as represented by ‘Australia’s sons, Eureka’s heirs’ but finds the gender representation more complex. While there are only fat men, representations of a federated Australia as a woman are common enough – though not so much the sister as the obedient wife (pp. 67-68).	3
Contributors to the section ‘institutions’ argue the toss over the relative influences of both labour and capital in bringing about the ‘Australian settlement’ – the New Protection, arbitration. Gaby Ramia and Nick Wailes critique Frank Castle’s ‘wage earner’ welfare state model as an explainer of the particular social protection that emerged in the new federation, Erik Eklund explores the role of the various employer organisations and Ray Markey teases out the deep and abiding community loyalties which gave life to labour organisations and questions whether there was much of a shift to a national loyalty by 1914.	4
The final section contains three biographical sketches – John Bannon on South Australian federation politician Charles Kingston, Joy Damousi on Margaret Cuthbertson, Victoria’s first factory inspector and Mark Hearn on John Dwyer, agitator and disappointed radical who had hoped for something better than the deal the new Australia dished up. In his pithy introduction to this section Terry Irving observed that federation was not about a coming together so much as a way of ‘managing difference’	5
Which brings me to a certain unease I feel about this book. In their introduction, Mark Hearn and Greg Patmore claim that the book ‘holds the mirror up to who we are now’ in the Centenary of Federation year, and observe that many of the issues articulated at Federation remain unresolved, including some like ‘freedom to unionise’ which might be better understood as a perceived ‘right’ that has been unravelled in the last 20 years. But apart from Raelene Frances, who is explicit in arguing that current deregulation is inimical to women’s working conditions, (p. 41) if there is any discussion about the ‘now’ of nationhood, it tends to be couched in fairly complacent terms. Many of the contributors are careful to acknowledge the role of ‘exclusion’ and ‘whiteness’ in the new Australia of labour’s dreams while racism is central to the argument of Kay Saunders piece on the economy and the discourse of labour in Northern Australia. But there is a sense that all this is past. Macintyre juxtaposes an ‘initial preoccupation with an independent and racially exclusive nationhood’ with ‘the more recent striving for a multicultural republic’ (p. 11) while Hearn and Patmore observe that ‘a remnant of White Australia lingers in the isolationism of One Nation’. They say it is vital to recall the forgotten voice of the marginalised. ‘This voice still struggles for recognition and so often responds to change with suspicion and apathy’ (pp. 3, 8). Are they talking about that voice? The one that has responded so resoundingly with suspicion to the truly marginalised of the earth – the refugee, the asylum-seeker. That loud voice that both the current conservative government and the Labor opposition has listened to so well. The voice that Labor has labelled ‘aspirational’ and adapted its policies to suit.	6
Another way of putting this is to observe that this book was written pre-Tampa and I am reviewing it post. Which is not quite fair. Did the ground shift so greatly in the Centenary of Federation year, or were we all just too complacent in our assessments of the present? If historians do not speak clearly in the present, what is the study of the past for?	7
City of Sydney Council SHIRLEY FITZGERALD

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.