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Why Compare Labour in Australia and Britain?

Neville Kirk

This introduction to the thematic section explains the genesis and sets the methodological and historiographical contexts of the comparative Australian and British articles which appear in this issue of Labour History. Having made a case for comparative Australian and British labour history, the introduction then identifies the scarcity of research in this area and considers the ways in which the articles presented here can contribute towards filling gaps and further developing comparative and trans-national knowledge and understanding.

 1
The thematic section of the journal explores aspects of the comparative labour history of Australia and Britain. It arose out of a conference on UK and Australian Labour History, held in Manchester, England, over three days in July 2003. The conference organisers were Neville Kirk, Manchester Metropolitan University, on behalf of the UK Society for the Study of Labour History, Anne Morrow, of the Manchester International Centre for Labour Studies, University of Manchester, and Greg Patmore, University of Sydney, for the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. The conference brought together speakers from the UK, Australia and the USA. Organised into pairs or teams, the speakers had been asked in advance by the organisers to undertake the first step in a three-point programme. In line with the first step, presenters addressed their papers to a selected topic or theme in labour history largely from either an Australian or a British perspective. The next step, undertaken since the conference, was for these pairs and teams to work together to transform their nationally focussed conference papers into truly comparative British and Australian essays. The final step required Kirk and Patmore, the editors, to gather together the completed essays, to scrutinise them, to send them out to readers and to prepare them for publication. As many readers will be aware, this plan of action was broadly based upon an earlier Canadian and Australian comparative labour history initiative which resulted in the publication, in 1996, of a special joint issue of Labour/Le Travail and Labour History. Edited by Greg Kealey and Greg Patmore, this impressive publication is entitled Australia and Canada: Labour Compared. 2
      This section of Labour History represents the fruits of our collective labours to date. It by no means covers all the papers and subject areas covered at the Manchester conference, but the fact of publication will hopefully encourage other conference presenters to submit their final essays — concerning historiography, race, gender and 'passages' of culture, mutuality ideas and radicalism of various kinds — for consideration by either Labour History or Labour History Review. 3
      On a more general level, the aim is to further to develop the challenging but young, exciting and potentially very rewarding area of trans-national comparative labour history. While trans-national history, concerned as it is with exploring influences, connections, and relationships and exchanges across national boundaries, does not necessarily involve attention to the comparisons and contrasts and similarities and differences that underpin the comparative method and its application to history,1 nevertheless, this thematic section is consciously both trans-national and comparative in aim and character. We trace not only connections, relationships and influences, but also comparisons and contrasts in order to reveal, and in turn explain, patterns of similarity and difference mainly between, but at times within, 'labour' in Australia and Britain. Furthermore, we follow the example set by several students of 'labour' in a national context by investigating not only labour movements and their constituents, but also aspects of the wider societies of which labour movements are a part. 4
      The adoption of a comparative focus of a broad, trans-national kind enables us to better to assess what is unique, 'peculiar' or 'exceptional' about local, regional or national experience and to identify 'customs in common'. This, in turn, provides a reasonably sound and comprehensive basis upon which we can build explanations. The opportunities and rigours of the comparative method stand in sharp contrast to the 'defeatism' of post-modernism, with the latter's rejection of socio-structural analysis in favour of fragmentary descriptions of largely personal representations of life. In view of the continuing and demonstrable existence of a world beyond self — a world of environmental crisis, of growing and stark inequality, of contrasting political economies and of bloody and catastrophic fundamentalist 'crusades' — it is surely high time that historians, and especially younger historians, once again engaged more actively and widely with this 'outside world' rather than confining themselves to the study of personal subjectivity. Both 'the personal' and 'the social', and their complex and inseparable interaction, stand at the very core of the historical project. 5
      On a less contentious note, the connections which concern the comparative historian have been a key feature of the historical relationship between Australia and Britain. Their very presence, depth and durability provide an immediate and obvious answer to the question posed by the title of this introduction, 'Why Compare Labour in Australia and Britain'? Both personal and wider collective and social connections, exchanges and reciprocal influences may be observed. For example, in 1901 the Melbourne South branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) held a 'complimentary smoke concert' to present Brother John Davies, 'The Australian Father of the ASE' with a certificate of merit in recognition of his 'pioneer services' to the union movement. British born, Davies had been one of the mid-century founders of the new engineering union. 'Blacklisted' for his unionising efforts and his refusal to sign 'the document', Davies set sail 'for some foreign shore where such tyranny did not exist'. Remarkably, Davies and other likeminded passengers formed 'the first Australian branch of the ASE' before the ship upon which they were travelling had even reached Sydney harbour. By 1901 the ASE enjoyed 'the longest continuous history' of any union in Australia and Davies had served the union as an influential figure and 'faithful member' of the union for half a century. The first president of the Sydney branch, he had left that city to establish the Melbourne branch of the ASE in 1859. The presentation to Davies in Melbourne was made by John C. Watson, the leader of the infant Australian Labor Party (ALP). It symbolised the close and developing tie between the trade union movement and the ALP in the New Commonwealth.2 6
      Davies, of course, was not alone in his trans-hemispheric commitment to the 'uplifting' cause of trade unionism. For several other emigrant British trade-union and Chartist 'pioneers' likewise exported what Paul Pickering has aptly termed their 'trade of agitation' to Australia, New Zealand and other 'settler' and colonial societies.3 Together with a group of young and predominantly Australian-born leaders, these British-born veterans played a key role in the remarkable rise not only of the trade-union movement in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Australia (and this in the face of serious defeats in the 1890s), but also of the Australian Labor party and the advancement, on the eve of World War I, of the labour movement as a whole to a position of major importance within Australian society. Moreover, labour's 'precocious' development in this period may have been symptomatic of the wider sociological and cultural 'making' of the Australian working class.4 7
      The nature of the British pioneers' transported radicalism, its socio-political impact upon their adopted countries, its contribution to the moving and developing international 'frontier of radicalism', and the ways in which it was adapted to, modified and transformed within Australasia, are issues of major historical significance. Thankfully there are signs that these issues now receiving the kind of serious and detailed attention from historians that their importance merits.5 Furthermore, it is important to note that the flow of trans-national and trans-hemispheric radical ideas and influences was not simply a one-way process, from the British metropolitan 'core' to the colonial Australasian 'periphery'. Such an assumption is both condescending and misleading because a far more complex, two-way process was at work. For example, by the era of World War I years the Australian labour movement had outgrown its 'apprenticeship' to its British 'master'. It now saw itself as strong, independent and influential — a shining example or 'beacon' to workers and their labour movements worldwide, including those in 'downtrodden' Britain, as to how to achieve growth, unity, and power and influence in a remarkably short period of time. Significantly, it trumpeted its 'New World Virtues' — 'mateship', openness, democracy, egalitarianism, social justice and radical social change — and was equally loud in its dismissal of the 'outmoded vices' of both 'Old World' Britain —'groveldom', 'natural' inequality, privilege and 'class' rule — and of the 'Old New World' USA — the pursuit of Mammon, corruption, corporate rule, the eclipse of 'people power' and republican virtue. Of equal significance was the fact that progressives, radicals and even revolutionaries from across the world, including prominent members of the pioneering British labour movement, manifested deep interest in, and were keen to visit and learn from, the 'New World' examples of their comrades in Australia and New Zealand.6 Some 70 years later — when Margaret Thatcher was hammering the unions and the British Labour party was in seemingly terminal decline — the national successes of the Australian Labor party once again provided both lessons and hope for their British brothers and sisters, or at least those about to pioneer New Labour. In sum, the 'core-periphery' model masks the many-sided and contingent processes of mutual influence and interchange between Britain and Australasia. 8
      These labour-movement connections and reciprocal influences, of course, are part of a wider network of profound and enduring relationships between Australians and Britons. Some 98 per cent of the early twentieth-century Australian population had migrated from Britain and Ireland. Ties and visits to family and friends 'back home' and 'down under' have remained extremely strong during the past — and into the present century. Much the same may be said of the shared, if at times fiercely competitive, leisure-based interests and wider cultural allegiances of many Australians and Britons. The Australian colonies inherited British forms of government, religion, law and political structures, although in some cases with different effects and outcomes. For example, the Australian state has traditionally exercised a more active and extensive role in economy, society and politics than its counterpart in Britain. As Justin Davis Smith and Melanie Oppenheimer observe in their article in this issue, 'the state has always played a major role in all facets of Australian life', due largely to modern Australia's 'foundation as a British sponsored penal colony in the late eighteenth century'.7 A major reason for progressive foreign observers' fascination with late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Australia as a 'social laboratory' lay in the fact that the state was at the centre of attempts to create a 'New World', a 'workingman's paradise'. As Davis Smith and Oppenheimer further observe, state 'domination' in 'many aspects of life' at this time was reflected in 'a system of government pensions, maternity allowances, the concept of the living wage...compulsory arbitration and female suffrage'. Notwithstanding the revival of socialism and the growth of New Liberalism, 'collectivism' and 'state socialism' were far less advanced in Britain. For example, whereas the British state and most employers and workers remained wedded to a 'voluntary' or 'market-based' system of industrial relations, Australia introduced compulsory arbitration as a key feature of the New Commonwealth. Herein lay a major difference in the twentieth-century industrial relations systems of the two countries. 9
      Of further significance was Australia's adoption of a federal system of government. This has meant that whereas the political arms of the labour movement in Britain have concentrated their main efforts upon the capture of national parliamentary power, their counterparts in Australia have usually pursued a two-pronged strategy aimed at the achievement of political office at both the state and federal level. (In both countries, of course, there has been a common concern with local politics, although local governments in Australia have traditionally enjoyed fewer powers than in Britain.) As David Coates and Greg Patmore observe in their article on Labour and the state in this issue, there has often been a marked contrast between the striking and regular successes achieved by the ALP at the state level (for example, Labor as 'the natural party of government' in the most populous state of New South Wales) and its far less impressive record at the federal level.8 The ALP's very disappointing performance in the October 2004 election provides the most recent example of this. The federal system, complete with its powerful and frequently hostile upper houses and a constitution which simultaneously places serious obstacles in the way of radical change and confers ultimate legal power on the federal government rather than the states in the event of a conflict of interest, has created 'limitations for a national approach to key issues'. The more straightforward British system, based upon a largely unwritten constitution and the single institution and undisputed supremacy of a national parliament (albeit at times with an 'obstructive' House of Lords), means that, in principle if by no means always in practice, a majority vote for Labour at a general election can be more easily and quickly translated into practical government policy. 10
      Other similarities, differences and tensions abound. Notwithstanding the growth of a strong spirit of independence and nationalism at various periods in Australia's history, including nationalism of an anti-British republican kind, the federation of the six colonies into the New Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 took place under the Crown and Australia has remained a loyal member of the Commonwealth. During the first half of the twentieth century very close ties continued to exist between the Australian and British economies, albeit with the former still heavily dependent upon and servicing the needs of the latter. To be sure, from the 1960s onwards Britain turned increasingly to Europe while Australia became much less reliant upon Britain, increasingly challenging and in some instances discarding British influences and opening up her economy and society to Asian, American and global influences and challenges. However, to the present day the British monarch remains Australia's head of state and Australia and Britain are key members of the 'western' alliance. 11
      Yet these close and longstanding connections cannot hide the fact that historical studies of relations between the rich and powerful in Australia and Britain and, even more so, of the mass of their respective populations, including members of their labour movements, are in very short supply.9 While we now possess a large and impressive body of literature concerning the history of labour movements and social class within the domestic contexts of both countries, and while the domestic historical study of the related subjects of place, race and gender is equally impressive but far less substantial in character, our comparative knowledge and understanding of these subject areas, of the identification and explanation of key points of comparison and contrast between Australia and Britain, is extremely limited. Unanswered or partly answered questions abound. For example, how and why did the 'precocious' early twentieth-century Australian labour movement referred to earlier, make such rapid gains both domestically and in relation to its pioneering British counterpart? This question, of course, invites us to situate and explore 'labour' within its wider societal contexts. To what extent did emigrant Britons, including British radicals, transport a conscious identity of 'whiteness' to Australia? Or was the identity of 'White Australia' forged first and foremost in the new surroundings of their adopted country, in, for example, their newfound place in the racially diverse British Empire and their 'settler' experiences of contact and relations with Aborigines and their fears of labour market and other forms of competition from Asian countries, especially China and Japan? How have the structures and popular representations of class, race, nation and empire developed and interacted over time in the two countries? How have workers' perceptions of their class-based and national identities been informed, however unwittingly, by the experiences of Empire and Commonwealth? In closely related fashion, to what extent have anti-imperial views 'from below' challenged the enormous force of the predominantly conservative and consensual view of Empire and Commonwealth expressed by elites in both countries? And to what extent have historians, and especially British historians of the British Empire, largely and uncritically reproduced this consensual 'view from above' and assumed that it was also characteristic of the consciousness of 'the people' of Australia and Britain?10 To what extent and why, as suggested by Margaret MacDonald and other labour-movement visitors from Britain, did late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australian women enjoy more opportunities for progress and advancement than their sisters 'back home'?11 Furthermore, did this purported state of affairs persist well into the twentieth century? 12
      I could continue to pose many more questions further to illustrate my point about the massive neglect or outright absence of comparative research. But the questions already listed have hopefully established my case. A timely opportunity exists for us to begin to fill these gaps and advance the comparative study of workers, labour movements and society in Australia and Britain? Are we ready to seize it? 13
      The articles in this volume of Labour History strongly suggest that we are. The first two contributions are mainly general in character. Stefan Berger and Greg Patmore carefully consider the case for comparative labour history and address the nature of and reasons for the latter's limited development in both Australia and Britain. Alan Bell, Janette Martin and Sigrid McCausland pool their archival skills usefully to compare the evolution, location and strengths and weaknesses of labour history archives in Australia, England, Wales and Scotland. 14
      The following five contributions focus on more specific subject areas, albeit over relatively long periods of time. In their clear and concise comparison of employer management practice in Australia and the UK 1900–50, Arthur McIvor and Chris Wright suggest that the 'exceptionalism' of the Australian system of compulsory arbitration was in many ways overshadowed by the 'marked similarities', both coercive and conciliatory in character, between British and Australian management practice towards workers and trade unions. Phillip Deery and Neil Redfern then set out to explain a paradox. Why did the Communist Party of Australia and the Communist Party of Great Britain both fail disastrously to maintain their bright 'prospects for future growth' in the immediate post-World War II years? The answer to the 'sharp slide' in the two parties' fortunes by 1950 is located in both the changing international situation, especially the onset of the Cold War and the role of the Communist Information Bureau, or Cominform, and the shifting domestic dynamics within the Australian and British labour movements, with particular reference to the relationship between Labour and Communist parties. This combined approach, note the authors, 'has not previously been attempted in the relevant literature'. 15
      In their focus upon the social history of labour, Bob James and Dan Weinbren offer a critical commentary on the literature and history of friendly societies in Australia and Britain mainly from the late eighteenth century onwards. Their article ranges widely to consider the aspects of region and class, migrants, democracy, health, insurance and the state and 'roots and branches'. Justin Davis Smith and Melanie Oppenheimer further pursue the theme of 'voluntarism' in their thought-provoking comparison of the attitudes and policies of the British and Australian labour movements towards voluntary action, with reference to both mutual aid and philanthropy. Davis Smith and Oppenheimer argue that the 'myth' of 'Labour hostility to voluntary action' explains 'to some degree' the 'invisibility of voluntary action in labour historiography'. Yet they clearly show that 'there has always been a strand within labour thinking in the two countries that has seen voluntary action as an essential complement to the state'. Furthermore, that this strand has traditionally been stronger in the more 'voluntarist' Britain context . By way of contrast the state and 'collectivism' have figured more prominently in both the general history of Australia and her labour movement. 16
      Labour's attitudes to the state are also explored in the concluding substantive article by David Coates and Greg Patmore. These two authors maintain that 'the hegemony of neo-liberal views' since the 1980s has placed labour movements worldwide very much on the defensive and forced Labour and social democratic parties, even when in office, to rethink their attitudes towards the state 'as an instrument of policy' and 'socialism as an end of that policy'. Specific concern rests with 'the pattern of continuity and discontinuity in state theory and practice' displayed by the Australian Labor Party and Labour and New Labour in Britain since the early 1980s. The convincing and balanced conclusion reached by Coates and Patmore is that, notwithstanding undoubtedly novel aspects, it is the uneven deployment of the usage of state power by both labour parties — to 'restructure the state, to manage civil society, and to trigger economic growth' — that is most pronounced. In overall terms, 'deep and powerful lines of continuity' exist alongside Australian and British Labours' very public resort to 'discontinuities'. Finally, Greg Kealey's postscript provides an insightful and challenging review of the material presented here. 17
      In conclusion, I am confident that the reader will share my view that the articles in this thematic section make a very useful contribution towards the development of trans-national, comparative labour history. Rooted in both primary and secondary sources, they offer both new conclusions and avenues for future research and critical syntheses of the existing literature. Perhaps the most important factor is that they are truly comparative in character. In all these ways, moreover, they constitute a small step forward towards the development of trans-national, comparative labour history which has the potential to become global in its conceptualisation, methodology and empirical substance. In view of the rapidity and profundity of the present phase in the history of globalisation — of the increasingly international and global ambition and reach of the commodity-based system of industrial capitalism — the need for largely nationally-focussed labour historians to take on board the importance of 'the global' assumes immediate importance.12 18


Endnotes

1. Ann Curthoys, 'Does Australian History Have a Future?', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 33, no. 118, 2002, pp. 140–52.

2. Neville Kirk, Comrades and Cousins: Globalization Workers and Labour Movements in Britain the USA and Australia from the 1880s to 1914, Merlin Press, London, 2003, p. 113.

3. Paul Pickering, 'Chartism and the "Trade of Agitation" in Early Victorian Britain', History, vol. 76, 1991, pp. 221–37.

4. Stuart Macintyre, The Oxford History of Australia, Vol. 4, The Succeeding Age 1901–1942, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1997, pp. 85–7; Kirk, Comrades and Cousins, pp. 111–20.

5. See, for example, Paul Pickering, '"The Finger of God", Gold and Political Culture in Colonial New South Wales', in Ian D. McCalman (ed.), Gold: Forgotten Histories and Lost Artefacts of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001; Paul Pickering, 'A Wider Field in a New Country: Chartism in Colonial Australia', in Marian Sawer (ed.), Elections Full Free and Fair, Federation Press, Sydney, 2001, chapter 2; Antony Taylor and Luke Trainor, 'Monarchism and Anti-Monarchism': Anglo-Australian Comparisons c1870–1901', Social History, vol. 24, no. 2, May 1999, pp. 158–73; Antony Taylor, 'Land and Liberty: Henry George in Britain and Australia', unpublished paper presented to the UK Australian Labour History Conference, Manchester, July 2003; Miles Fairburn, The Ideal Society and its Enemies: the Foundations of Modern New Zealand Society 1850–1900, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1989.

6. Kirk, Comrades and Cousins, pp. 70–8, 85–91, 106–11.

7. Justin Davis Smith and Melanie Oppenheimer, 'The Labour Movement and Voluntary Action in the UK and Australia: a Comparative Perspective', Labour History, no. 88, May 2005.

8. Greg Patmore and David Coates, 'Labour and the State in Australia and the UK', Labour History, no. 88, May 2005.

9. For studies of these relations with respect to 'labour', see the references to Pickering, Taylor, Taylor and Trainor and Kirk cited above. For 'the view from above' see, for example, Gavin Souter, Lion and Kangaroo: the Initiation of Australia, Text Publishing Company, Melbourne, 2000.

10. See, for example, David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire, Penguin Books, London, 2001, especially chapter three.

11. Kirk, Comrades and Cousins, pp. 72–3.

12. Marcel van der Linden, 'The "Globalization" of Labor and Working-Class History and its Consequences', International Labor and Working Class History, vol. 65, Spring 2004, pp. 136–56.

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