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Creating Labour's Space: the Case of the Melbourne Trades Hall
Cathy Brigden*
In the wake of the achievement of the eight-hour day in 1856 by building trades unionists in Victoria, attention shifted to the pursuit and construction of a Trades Hall. This claiming of space, the creation of labour's space, is explored in this paper. Drawing on the work of geographers, in particular debates about space, this analysis aims to extend our understanding of the spatial dimensions of peak bodies by reassessing the historical significance of the Trades Hall building for the Victorian union movement. The paper begins by examining the impetus for the building, before exploring its significance in embedding the union movement into the colony's built environment, while the final section explores the annual eight-hour day celebrations as another space-claiming strategy of colonial unionists.
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| Unlike trade unions, where the place of the union is commonly the members' workplaces, many peak union bodies become identified with a space, a place of and for labour, such as a trades hall. Many peak bodies date from the nineteenth century when securing such a place was often an early collective objective of unions, leading to trades hall buildings becoming historic 'places for labour', commanding space now long recognised as labour's space. For many Victorian trade unionists, the Victorian Trades Hall Council (THC) is identified with its physical abode, the Trades Hall. Located on the corner of Lygon and Victoria Streets in metropolitan Melbourne, the Trades Hall building has been the home of the THC and the Victorian union movement since 1859. |
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This paper explores the significance of this collective claiming of space and creation of labour's space by looking at the case of the Melbourne Trades Hall in the nineteenth century. Drawing on the geographical concepts of space and place to explore spatial dimensions of trade unionism, this analysis aims to contribute to the redressing of the 'space-blindness' of much industrial relations and labour history research. The paper begins by briefly discussing the contribution made by a spatially informed and aware analysis to our understanding of peak union bodies, before focusing on the particular case of the Trades Hall. The contribution of the building to the colonial union movement is then explored. The last section briefly looks at the further efforts by colonial unionists in claiming public space, through the eight-hour day celebrations. |
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Space and Peak Bodies | |
| A growing dialogue between industrial relations researchers and geographers has begun to focus attention on the spatial dimensions of trade unionism, through the exploration of space, place and scale. For geographers, this has been part of a shift from more 'capital-centric' analyses with the development of a 'distinctive and energetic subdiscipline of "labour geography"', whereas for industrial relations researchers and labour historians, it involved a broader move to firstly, recognise and secondly, begin to redress the aspatiality of much industrial relations research.1 As yet, however, relatively little attention has been given to the spatial dimensions of peak union bodies, which in turn replicates the still under-researched area of peak bodies.2 With a pattern of heightened academic interest in peak bodies, it is appropriate to consider how spatially informed and sensitive research may deepen our understanding of the roles of peak bodies. |
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For geographers, space is a central concept. As Doreen Massey evocatively states, 'space is by its very nature full of power and symbolism, a complex web of relations of domination and subordination, of solidarity and cooperation'.3 With little specific focus on peak bodies in the labour geography literature, what has not been explored is the significance for peak bodies and the spaces they create and inhabit. Herod's call for a 'recentering' of struggle in redressing workers' invisibility — whereby 'the story [is told] not only of how capital makes urban geographies but how labor does too' — resonates when peak bodies are the object of analysis.4 When peak bodies have an identifiable space, then this too should be examined. Just as spatial patterns and practices are found in workplaces, labour's spaces pose similar analytical challenges.5 Drawing on the concept of the 'labour precinct' which reflects both 'a sense of place and collective identity', provides insights into the historical, spatial imprint of labour.6 |
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The essentially spatial and overtly geographic nature of peak bodies — as commonly expressed in their place-specific names — can be unpacked by drawing on a spatially aware literature, its language, concepts and insights. The significance of place, the manipulation of space, as well as their intersection, can then be explicitly addressed in the analysis of peak bodies. Applying and extending spatial concepts exploring trade unions more generally to the particular cases of peak bodies can begin to produce spatially aware peak body theory. For instance, Jane Wills demonstrates how traditions are translated over space, what she calls a 'spatial translation of tradition', whereby 'workers seek solidarity from others, taking their own lessons of struggles to trade unionists and supporters in other places'.7Although her discussion is focused on individual unions, it is evident that the very nature of peak bodies in bringing unions together and their activities, such as peak body meetings, forums and campaigns, clearly involve such translation processes. Not only do peak bodies provide the mechanisms of the 'processes of translation by movement, demonstration and solidarity', their very creation is itself part of such a process.8 The next section begins with just such creation in Victoria in the 1850s. |
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In the Beginning | |
The origins of the THC are inextricably linked with the eight-hour day movement.9 Following the achievement of the eight-hour day by the building trades in 1856, attention was then directed to the attainment of a trades hall where the organised trades could meet:
The eight hours being won, the next step initiated for the advancement of the unions was the desire to become possessed of a piece of land and suitable buildings, where the combined trades might meet, en masse if required.10
The idea was first raised at a meeting of the Operative Masons in 1856. With the formation of a 'trades hall' committee, lobbying of the O'Shanassy government commenced for a site for a trades hall, thus beginning the space-claiming actions of the eight-hour pioneers.11 Public support for such a space was found in the Argus, though not necessarily for the purposes of union organisation. With the increase in time for 'rest, recreation, and improvement' following the reduction in working hours, the newspaper declared:
we deem it an apt and fitting occasion to suggest the erection of a Trades' Hall for building artisans, in which trades meetings may be held, and a system of mutual instruction imparted. The formation of such an institution as that we allude to might appropriately serve to commemorate the successful termination of their peaceful struggle, and would afford at the same time an evidence of the increasing intelligence of the operative classes in the colony.12
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When the eight-hour trades met in 1857, on the first anniversary of the eight-hour victory, the need for their own separate space — for a hall — was reiterated:
for many years a serious inconvenience has been felt by the Melbourne Operatives in not having a Hall, as their place of union, where they can assemble to conduct the business and education of their order, and further that this inconvenience amounts to a positive evil in retarding the growth of the working classes.13
The impetus lay, then, not only in protecting the eight-hour day and assisting union organisation by provision of the meeting place, but in providing a space for cultural uplift for the working class, as was indeed reflected by the adopted name for the space: the Trades Hall and Literary Institute. Similar sentiments were reiterated at the 1858 eight-hour day fundraising rally in a poem written for the occasion, in which a Trades Hall was seen as:
A place where workmen may their minds engage
To useful purpose o'er the printed page
...
A Hall where wives and children may be found
To listen to a concert of sweet sound,
Or hear the lecturer and quietly learn
What years of study teach him to discern;
...
You aid them, friends, with more than empty praise,
Your contributions will assist to raise
A people's palace on yon vacant soil
A palace built and own'd by hardy sons of toil.14
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That the hall was regarded as a public space for the working class was underscored by the comments of Benjamin Douglass (chairman of the first Eight Hours Anniversary Committee and president of the Operative Plasterers' Society) at a public meeting of the Trades Hall and Literary Institute: that '[I]t would be for public purposes, and as a public space', not just restricted to the eight-hour trades (as were the eight-hours demonstrations).15 The internal, 'public' space was to include:
a hall, available for the public meetings of the various associated bodies, for concerts and for lectures, a library and reading-room, and a café, or other establishment, at which refreshments may be obtained, and from which intoxicating liquors will be excluded.16
The reference to 'intoxicating liquors' reflects another motivation for a separate space. A temperance thread is found in newspaper reports arising from the reliance on meeting in other (and in some eyes, unsatisfactory) spaces, specifically public houses. Meetings over the eight-hours campaign were all held in taverns, in particular the Belvidere Hotel in East Melbourne, later described as the 'nursery of many of those reforms to which Victorian workmen hold so tenaciously ... here the scheme for the erection of the National Trades Hall and Literary Institute was propounded'.17 |
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A Crown grant was secured in early 1858, providing one acre of land on the corner of Lygon and Victoria Streets.18 The land immediately became symbolic space. The timing of the grant enabled the 1858 eight-hour demonstration to start from the site of the future Trades Hall, demonstrating the significance of the space even prior to the building's construction.19 From the opening of the temporary building in May 1859, the Trades Hall 'became the chief rendezvous of the unions' or, as the Argus more evocatively described it, 'the trysting place'.20 From this point, it is possible to see the genesis of a labour precinct, which was consolidated with the erection of the building.21 The original temporary building, to be 'constructed of flooring-boards, which will be afterwards available for the permanent structure', was described as a 'wooden building, with a corrugated iron roof' with a lecture-hall seating about 1,100 persons and classrooms '[o]n each wing of the main building'.22 At the inaugural address of the Trades Hall and Literary Institute in 1860, Douglass described the proposed permanent building as 'an edifice by the erection of which we shall perpetuate ... the "honour and dignity of labour"'.23 |
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From the outset, the amount of space a union commanded on the Trades Hall committee was correlated with size: one delegate for unions with fewer than two hundred members (initially, the painters, plasterers, coachbuilders and labourers) and two delegates for the larger unions (the carpenters, bricklayers, masons and printers).24 Delegation rules thus began the carving out of space in the Trades Hall Committee, with power and space inextricably intertwined. Spatial domination produced patterns of power.25 Use of the Trades Hall space steadily grew throughout 1859, as more unions (including the curriers, blacksmiths, hammermen, and plumbers) sought admittance to the committee and use of the hall. Later that year, the delegation rules were amended, reflecting union growth. A minimum membership was set at 70: with two delegates for unions with between 70 and 100 members; three delegates for 100 to 200 members; four delegates for 200 to 300 members, and five delegates for over 300 members, together with the Trustees as ex-officio members of the committee.26 |
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As a space for unions, the Trades Hall reflected the vicissitudes experienced by unions in their own early years of organisation. External factors shaped the internal space. For example, in 1860, the impact of adverse economic conditions in the colony affected union organisation.27 In some trades, the degree of unemployment was extensive:
two-thirds of 1,000 coachbuilders, half of the 1,500 tailors, half of the 3,000 bootmakers and two-thirds of the 1,500 carpenters could not gain employment in their trades. Six hatters out of 100 or 150, one-tenth of the 300 curriers and only 50 cabinetmakers were following their skills. Coachmakers, cabinetmakers and bootmakers were almost confined to repair-work.28
The cessation of the coachmakers society and the plasterers saw their delegates' names 'erased'.29 Absences were often temporary for, as unions re-formed when the economy recovered in the mid-1860s, they typically sought re-admittance. |
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Due to the increasing demand for use of the meeting space, another 'back shed' needed to be built and an existing room improved.30 Other unions became involved, either seeking terms of admittance (engineers in 1864) or use of a meeting room (cabinet and chairmakers in 1865, saddlers and harnessmakers, and coopers in 1868, curriers and jewellers in 1869). While the number of unions represented on the committee continued to increase, with the shoemakers, tinsmiths and tailors sending delegates in 1868 and the painters and paperhangers in early 1869, other unions were not excluded from a conference of all societies in October 1868 to discuss the permanent building. This confirmed that the space was envisaged as an inclusive one. Extending the temporary building helped meet current needs, but the permanent building remained the goal, with efforts increasing from 1868 to raise sufficient funds, especially as affiliations continued to increase in the 1870s.31 |
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Such involvement helped shape the emergent 'spatial translation of tradition' underway in the Trades Hall. With many unions, however, still in the formative stages of their own nascent 'traditions', in this period this process is more appropriately understood as the spatial translation of experience. Unions and unionists shared experiences in organising, acting collectively when dealing with employers, and engaging in early collective bargaining. These experiences increasingly reflected a broader range of union experiences, as the Trades Hall Committee from 1859 became more inclusive in terms of admittance:
Nor was there any attempt to confine [membership] to the founding unions or to those unions that had secured the eight hours. Nor were the founding unions given greater representation than other unions, regardless of the size of their financial membership. On the contrary, the trend from the late fifties was to admit all unions, skilled or unskilled, eight hours or not, who could afford to pay their share of working expenses and other levies.32
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As well as enabling the spatial translation of industrial experience, the Trades Hall also arguably became a place for the spatial translation of political experience, as shown by Kellaway as she traces the political activities of prominent Trades Hall members:
the interaction of industrial and political factors around the [eight-hours] issue gave the Melbourne body a significant role from its origins ... This association had the most far-reaching consequences for the development of the Trades Hall Committee, for its leaders became identified with the most industrially militant and politically-conscious section of the union movement in the pre-1870 period.33
From the mid 1850s, the 'most politically-conscious Trades Hall leaders ... acted as "stump orators", arranged "monster meetings", public debates in which "moral suasion" was exercised to further the eight-hours cause and torchlight processions'. With Kellaway indicating this was 'a legacy of their Chartist backgrounds', attention is drawn to how factors shaping the spatial translation of political experience were influenced by international political movements as well as the local political context.34 |
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While these industrial and political dimensions of the spatial translation of experience were developing, so too was another spatial feature: the gendering of the space. Debate about the gendered dimension of space features in the geography literature, with Spain and Massey, amongst others, reminding us of the intersections between space, place and gender.35 As Spain argues, '"Gendered spaces" separate women from knowledge used by men to produce and reproduce power and privilege'.36 Citing unions as one example of a 'men's club', she examines the negative impact of spatially segregated institutions and their control of information on women's status.37 Even when craft unions assisted women to form unions, 'separate organizations —separate places— were created in which women were segregated from men ... the result [being] a lack of female access to masculine knowledge and status'.38 The gendered constructions of space into (feminine) 'private' space and (masculine) 'public' space also illuminates the relationship between unions and women. Historically, unions, being located in that masculinised public space, were not regarded as women's places. When women moved from the private sphere, 'the conventionally ascribed domain for women', into the public sphere, the masculinity of trade unionism was challenged.39 The impact on peak bodies, when formed by such unions, was the translation of one form of spatial segregation into another, and the creation of one more gendered space. The perpetuation of gendered space by peak bodies took numerous forms. With early union organisation occurring primarily in male-dominated trades, gendered patterns of solidarity shaped the THC from the beginning. As the spatial translation of experience rested on the experiences of these male unionists and their unions, it was consequently significantly gendered. |
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The gendered nature of the Trades Hall was later consolidated with the building of the Female Operatives Hall, which opened in 1883 in the wake of the tailoresses' strike of 1882.40 This strike, demonstrating the militancy of women workers, gained the support of the Trades Hall Committee leaders, with a mass meeting of tailoresses 'five hundred within the Hall and five hundred outside' being told the Trades Hall Committee 'had taken up the matter so that women workers would become party to the eight-hours' system of labour'.41 The notion of 'cultural uplift' was also seen as important for women workers, with the Female Operatives Hall being seen by the male leadership as enabling the Trades Hall Committee 'to provide for the amusement of the females who can attend at night for lectures and thereby be kept off the streets'.42 Rather than this then being linked to the fostering of industrial and political activities of women workers, of greater importance seems to be the protection of the morality of women workers, with the use of the term 'off the streets' suggesting working women's propensity to slide into immoral behaviour if not looked after by men, in this case the union leadership. The Female Operatives Hall provided separate women's space while confirming that the rest of the Trades Hall could well be described as a 'Men's House', paralleling aspects of Silvia Rogers' depiction of the British House of Commons.43 This separate but 'special' space suggests ambivalence about the presence of women in public space: on the one hand, seen as part of the union movement but on the other, as needing or deserving different space.44 |
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The Significance of the Trades Hall Building | |
Historians have tended to look at the THC in the mid-nineteenth century and interpret the committee's focus on the building as signifying an undue narrowness of interest, as denoted by Sutcliffe's description of it as 'merely a committee of management' or Gollan's view that in the 1860s it 'became little more than a committee of management'.45 The usual (and negative) contrast is with the Sydney Trades and Labour Council (the forerunner of the NSW Labour Council formed in 1871) which, early on, adopted an overt industrial role.46 While, on one hand, the centrality of building maintenance and fundraising can certainly be contrasted with the limited references in the Trades Hall Committee minutes to an interest or concern with the struggles being faced by the various unions, on the other hand, whether this was too restrictive a preoccupation for a peak body in its formative years is debateable. Reeves attributes this preoccupation with the building, and the Trades Hall Committee's 'erratic development' and 'ambivalent attitude' to unions, to 'the notion of permanence':
For the Committee, the construction of a permanent hall provided an appropriate focus for union activity while also demonstrating unionism's stability and achievements. On the other hand, the Committee's outwardly-reasonable demand that affiliated societies meet at the Hall, coupled with its refusal to involve itself in strike action, presumed a permanence or stability that relatively few unions possessed.47
A different light is cast upon this question when the preoccupation with the building is assessed from a spatial perspective. This claiming of space from the state, the objective of a permanent place for labour and the broader political vision for the working class, all demonstrate, at the very least, an inchoate understanding of the power of space, and control over space. Demanding, and moreover securing and then retaining, dedicated space for labour sent messages to the broader community about the role of unions in the colonial society. As one speaker pronounced at a meeting of the Trades Hall and Literary Institute in 1858: 'Union was strength and knowledge was power and both would be secured by the erection of their proposed building'.48 |
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While individual unions may have faced ebbs and flows in organisation and membership, the spatial constancy of the Trades Hall from 1859 confirmed an ongoing role for unions in the colonial economy and society. In the early decades of Victorian unionism, this was a radical claiming of space by collective action. Rather than just focussing on the characterisation of the Trades Hall Committee's industrial conservatism, this securing of space for labour and the support it gave to the organisation of labour meant a home was built for unions, irrespective of whether this proved to be a permanent one or a temporary one, providing a place for unionists to gather and meet. From his perspective in the 1880s, THC Secretary Murphy indicates the scope of the vision:
To give an instance of the sanguine expectations of the early promoters of the scheme for a permanent hall in the future, the walls were constructed of pitch-pine boards, which they intended should form the flooring of the permanent building at no distant date. They little dreamed that, although the time did not arrive till 1874, the capacity of both buildings, capable of holding 3,000 men, would be totally inadequate to the nightly requirements which a few short years would develop in the history of trades unionism in Victoria.49
The achievement of the Trades Hall Committee in its early years in the late 1850s and 1860s, years beset by economic downturn, therefore, should not be diminished. Indeed it should be regarded a bold, even presumptuous, assertion of labour's place. Early on in the colony's history, as well as beginning the development of a labour precinct, Trades Hall thus became part of the colonial built environment, together with other institutions like the State Library of Victoria,50 symbolising that union presence was no fleeting thing. With working men and women having little capacity to participate in colonial politics (C.J. Don election's in 1859 providing only limited political voice), the Trades Hall developed a political resonance, as shown its description by the late 1800s as 'the Parliament of Labour' and 'the Workingman's Parliament'.51 |
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Yi-Fu Tuan speaks of the symbolic (and often religious) overtones involved in raising an edifice:
Building is a complex activity. It makes people aware and take heed at different levels: at the level of having to make pragmatic decisions; of envisioning architectural spaces in the mind and on paper; and of committing one's whole being, mind and body, to the creation of a material form that captures an ideal ... The built environment, like language, has the power to define and refine sensibility. It can sharpen and enlarge consciousness.52
Arguably, such wholesale commitment was reflected in the Trades Hall Committee's pursuit of the building project, and is reminiscent of Tuan's view about 'building activity, which used to be thought of as the creation of a world'.53 This was to be no ordinary space; with the THC leadership suggesting that 'the complete Edifice should be a creditable Specimen of Architectural Art without being florid', the 1872 plans included a library and reading rooms, a main hall with a speaker's platform and an orchestra gallery, a smaller hall, a supper room (under the orchestra gallery), two society rooms, four committee rooms, and two friendly society rooms.54 After the foundation stone was laid in 1874, a further Crown grant was secured and the 'new' Trades Hall opened in 1875, designed by Melbourne's leading architects of the time, Reed & Barnes. The 'lofty aspirations' of the Trades Hall Committee leadership led to an architectural landmark, as seen by the north wing extension 'which included a grand stone staircase'.55 |
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The 1882 extension, as well as including more meeting rooms, added 'a fireproof banner room ... for the storage of the costly banners and insignia of the Trades'.56 Moreover, the increasing physical scale of the building through additions and extensions, together with its imposing 'Italian style of architecture,'57 meant it increasingly dominated its physical landscape. Awaiting the final 'completion of the Temple of Labour' in the 1880s, Murphy suggested it 'would leave the trades in possession of one of the noblest structures which will grace the city', as conveyed by his evocative description of the original 1880s Council Chamber ('one of the prettiest halls in Melbourne'):
It is aesthetically and richly decorated in light green, with hand painted friezes, relieved in the centre of each wall by a portrait of men who have made their mark in the history, and whom the working class delight to honour ... On the panels of the main entrance are two medallions in sepia, suggestive of the British workman in his prime and his old age, while the entablatures surmounting the private entrance bear ideals, illustrating painting and sculpture on the one side and science and agriculture on the other. Four life size busts mounted on pedestals keep the Trades Hall Council, for whom the room was designed and furnished, always in the presence of Wilson Gray, Charles Jardine Don, George Higginbotham [sic], and Benjamin Douglas [sic] ... The furniture and drapery is in green velvet to match the decorations, members being disposed in semi-circular order, with the addition of a stranger's gallery. On the walls are hung a few portraits of prominent leaders of the crafts.58
Marcella Pearce attests to the ongoing impact of the original Chamber (later known as 'Room 58' after a new chamber had been built to accommodate the increasing numbers of delegates): 'Room 58 was only a ghost of the exquisitely decorated original Chamber. Nevertheless you sensed an aura of its illustrious past when you entered'.59 The knitting of the fabric of the Victorian trade union movement had thus begun with the Trades Hall forming the central motif or, to use a more spatial metaphor, the building blocks of the union movement were laid with the foundations of the Trades Hall building. |
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Trades Hall, cnr. Victoria and Lygon Streets, Carlton, c 1889
Darge Photographic Co. Reproduced by permission La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria (H91.8)
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Dolores Hayden draws our attention to the interplay of space and power, asserting that: 'Another way to analyze the production of space historically is to look at power struggles as they appear in the planning, design, construction, use and demolition of typical buildings'.60 Emphasising the need to gain 'a larger sense of their political meaning', she draws on the words of social historian of architecture, Camille Wells: 'most buildings can be understood in terms of power or authority — as efforts to assume, extend, resist, or accommodate it'.61 It is appropriate, then, to look to the building itself for expression of the anticipated roles. As has been seen, the plans for the hall showed a range of envisaged roles: an industrial role (supporting union activity by providing meeting rooms), an educational role (the library and reading room), and a social role (the café).62 Moreover, securing the space itself was indicative of a political strategy, thus reflecting a political role. While the industrial role did not initially extend to running industrial campaigns, support was given in other ways. The importance of the building as the meeting place is again underlined by Kellaway's comment that in 1864 'the Trades Hall became the headquarters of the Coachbuilders' Strike Committee, foreshadowing developments in the eighties when the Trades Hall Council itself handled a number of major industrial disputes'.63 As she argues:
there were many examples from the 1850s of the Melbourne Trades Hall being used as a headquarters of strike committees and for public meetings at which Trades Hall officials and Legislative Assembly politicians put the strikers' case and called on the organised trades to make 'common cause' with them by providing financial and other assistance. Strike levies were common during this period.64
What is unable to be reflected in the written records and documents is the effect of informal contact between unions, union officials and members meeting in the Hall. Support, advice, encouragement, the forging of solidarity, and the development of a sense of 'common cause' all occur through informal networks that develop through proximity and shared experience: this was something the Trades Hall was in a unique position to foster. Hughes claims that, following the opening of the Trades Hall in May 1859, 'in a few months it had become the centre of industrial activity'.65 As highlighted earlier, these interactions underpinned the spatial translation of experience, as union members and officials came together in the corridors, halls, offices and rooms. |
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By the 1930s, images of daily life evocatively demonstrate how the vision of the early THC leadership had been achieved in creating a place for labour, when 'well over 100 unions and their staff occupied offices throughout the Trades Hall building — a place they also called "home"':
The Victoria Street end of the Trades Hall was always the busy area because the THC offices were at the top of the entrance stairs from the street and inside the actual Hall itself the wide vestibule was where the busy Victorian Branch of the ALP was situated. Meeting rooms along the eastern side of the hall way were well used. Most were particularly large and filled with long wooden seats to accommodate the unionists who were faithful in their attendance in those days. Along one part of the western wall was a big blackboard onto which the Union names, meeting room numbers and commencement times were written in chalk. This also applied to day time meetings, rallies and stop-work meetings, and during the weekends when Annual State and sometimes Federal Conferences were held in the magnificent Council Chamber on the first floor ... Covered in brown linoleum ... the constant heavy use by so many hundreds of people on a daily basis soon took toll of the lino. As time went by it was replaced by a marbilised rubber covering with the THC crest emblazoned in centre ... Arrayed along the eastern side of the hallway outside Room Three stood 100 metal letter boxes each one belonging to a particular Union or organisation.66
A broader political role and strategy (one distinct from a party political or a lobbying role) was envisaged: improving the lot of the working class, as begun by the securing of the eight-hour day. Douglass had articulated the significance of the eight-hours principle as 'a principle which has for its object the elevation of the moral, intellectual, and social welfare of the community at large'.67 Political consequences can also be detected (although not intended) in the Argus' fulsome support for the planned building: it was said to be a 'laudable desire' of its advocates to establish an 'institution, founded upon co-operative principles, self-supporting and designed to supply its members with enlarged opportunities of social intercourse, of mental culture, and of rational recreation'.68 While this reflects the belief in upward mobility of the times, it also entailed the working class having a collective focus. Carving out their own working-class identity was an important precursor to the development of a political identity, and subsequently a political party. |
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Claiming Public Space: the Eight-hour Day Celebrations | |
| Just as the building was, from 1859, a spatial representation of the trade union movement, itself growing in impressiveness as the union movement itself grew in strength, a forceful demonstration was seen every year from 1856 in the eight-hour day march which saw public, civic space claimed for labour to parade its workplace victories. While the Trades Hall has been described as public space, it was nevertheless a separate space for labour. In contrast, assuming control over public streets as occurred with the annual eight-hour day marches critically extended the THC's influence over civic space, further adding to the development of a labour precinct. |
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These celebrations of an industrial strategy around securing shorter hours (and the reinforcement of this as an ongoing union movement priority) were coupled with a political strategy about the role of unions in society. Hayden highlights the spatiality of parades, arguing that parades and festivals
help to define cultural identity in spatial terms by staking out routes in the urban cultural landscape. Although their presence is temporary they can be highly effective in claiming the symbolic importance of places. They intermix vernacular arts traditions (in their costumes, floats, music, dance, and performance) with spatial history (sites where they begin, march, and end).69
This spatial impact was immediately evident from the first eight-hour march in 1856, when over a thousand unionists marched, while between 1,600 and 1,800 marched the following year:
Some idea may be formed of the numbers composing the procession when we mention that as an unbroken line, of three and four abreast, reached from the east end of Bourke-street to the intersection of Russell-street.70
Following the march, numbers at the Cremorne gardens numbered around four thousand, as people gathered for the afternoon's entertainment. The following year, the unionists 'marched four abreast, and so large was their number that nearly a quarter of an hour was occupied in passing any given point'.71 |
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The spatial history of the march intersected with the Trades Hall in 1859 when the procession assembled for the first time at the Trades Hall building, with the numbers marching estimated to be 'no less than 3,000' from ten unions, with the fete attracting between 7 and 8,000 people. That this was a celebration of the working class, not just the male unionists, was emphasised by the Argus: 'River, road, and rail, contributed crowds of wives, and wives that are to be, and children — shoals of children, to the day's enjoyment'.72 Nonetheless, the gendered nature of the spatial translation of experience evident in the march itself, together with the physical separation of women from the marchers, demonstrated how early the gendered pattern of solidarity was created. |
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Extensive coverage of the 1860 procession described the marchers thus:
From meeting at "the trysting place" — ie the Trades Hall ... the immense procession fairly began its march, headed by the impracticable and underpaid masons, who by their respectable dresses, manly bearing, and badges of 'operative' masonry, presented a most favourably impressing appearance ... The other trades followed — the bricklayers, with bent backs and sturdy walk; the workers in metals, with intelligent faces, burly figures, and nonchalant stride; the unhealthy-looking painters, with pale cheeks and frequently genteel-looking dress; the 'decorators' — as paperhangers love to call themselves — with ruder health and pretentiously Sunday-dressed appearance; the labourers and quarrymen, with strongly-built limbs and bold bearing; the carpenters, with plain dress and business-like air; and bodies of almost all the other trades in Melbourne (save printers), with outwards characteristics savouring of their every-day labour. Bands of music and admirably painted silk banners accompanied every section of the procession, which must have been nearly half a mile in length.73
From such description, it can be seen how spatial translation of experience occurred in public space, in these cases the experience of securing and then celebrating the industrial achievement of shorter hours. Although numbers were affected by the economic downturn in the early 1860s, as the economy recovered so too did the number of participants, both in the procession and at the fete afterwards. Over six thousand gathered at the Botanic gardens in 1867 following the largest march for many years.74 |
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Indeed as the trades secured and maintained the eight hour day together with the ritualisation of the annual eight hours march and celebration, this process arguably began to transform the spatial translation of experience into the spatial translation of tradition, the tradition of the eight-hour day. While the first procession in 1856 was open to all, with the 'solicit[ing of] the presence and aid of every working man and the public at large', by the 1880s 'only bona fide members of eight hours bodies' were permitted to march.75 |
28
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As Pearce highlights, when discussing the significance of the eight hours procession and the Hall during the 1930s depression:
People could enjoy, for no cost, the Eight Hours Day celebrations, which was truly the day for the workers of Victoria to show off their skills and their loyalty to each other. The Trades Hall was a focal point of great significance in their lives and threw a protective arm around those who fought for justice and food for their families. The solidarity of the workers in those days was a binding force.76
This public demonstration, thus, was a symbolic spatial representation of the working class and its trade unions, claiming their (industrial and political) space in the colonial society. Such extensions into public civic space of peak body solidarity made peak body power and purpose not only visible but also tangible. The image of a strong and vibrant labour movement with an explicit and definitive role for a peak body was clearly reinforced. Not only was the Trades Hall part of the built environment, but the THC was also a force to be reckoned with in the colonial, and then state, economy and society. |
29
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Conclusion | |
| The Trades Hall, from its humble beginnings as a 'modest timber structure', was transformed into the 'home' of the Victorian union movement by the late nineteenth century. Its contribution to the built environment as clearly identifiable 'labour's space' reinforced the role of trade unions in the colonial economy and society, at a time when individual unions were still fighting for and securing their place in workplaces. |
30
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With greater attention now being given to the spatial dimension of trade unionism by labour geographers, labour historians and industrial relations researchers, as illustrated by the concept of the labour precinct, exploration of peak union bodies in this literature remains minimal. This examination of the space-claiming strategies of colonial trade unionists in their quest for a space for and place of labour contributes to redressing this gap in peak body research. By drawing on geographical concepts of space, analysis of the creation of space by and for labour confirmed the spatial significance of the Trades Hall, adding to our understanding of the contribution of the THC to colonial trade unionism. |
31
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In shedding light on the significance of the Trades Hall as a meeting place for unions and unionists, this paper has used Wills' notion of the 'spatial translation of tradition', describing how different union traditions are conveyed within and between unions. Given the nascency of the trade union movement in the period under review, an adapted version, the 'spatial translation of experience', was argued to depict more accurately the processes initially at play within the Trades Hall space. Examining the space also revealed its gendered nature, as a consequence of the male-dominated unionism of the time, epitomised by the construction of the Female Operatives' Hall following industrial activism by tailoresses. The discussion of the celebration of the achievement of the eight-hour day highlighted another space-claiming strategy which boldly took over public, civic space with the annual march through the city streets and the fete held each year after 1856. |
32
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In countering the often dismissive arguments of historians of the early role of the THC as just a building committee, the paper has drawn attention to the spatial significance of the space-claiming and the importance of the building in providing somewhere for the spatial translation of experience to take hold and bear fruit. Being labour's space was, therefore, both symbolic and practical. Erecting a permanent structure may have appeared to many to be but a premature and grandiose dream of a group of colonial unionists, but it inserted the Victorian union movement and the colonial working class into the landscape and the built environment of the colony, from where they have never been removed. |
33
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Endnotes
* Thanks to Bradon Ellem for his ongoing support and the helpful comments of the two anonymous Labour History reviewers.
1. Andrew Herod, Jamie Peck and Jane Wills, 'Geography and Industrial Relations', in Paul Ackers and Adrian Wilkinson (eds), Understanding Work and Employment — Industrial Relations in Transition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, p. 176; Bradon Ellem and John Shields, 'Rethinking "Regional Industrial Relations": Space, Place and the Social Relations of Work', Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 41, no. 4, December 1999, pp. 536–560; Andrew Herod, 'Towards a More Productive Engagement: Industrial Relations and Economic Geography Meet', in Bradon Ellem and Susan McGrath-Champ (eds), 'Special Issue: Industrial Relations Meets Human Geography', Labour & Industry, vol. 13, no. 2, 2002, pp. 5–17; Andrew Herod, Labor Geographies: workers and the landscapes of capitalism, Guildford Press, New York, 2001; Andrew Herod (ed.), Organising the Landscape: Geographical Perspectives on Labor Unionism, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1998.
2. Catherine Brigden, A Vehicle for Solidarity; the Victorian Trades Hall Council, 1948–1981, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2003; Bradon Ellem, Raymond Markey and John Shields (eds), Labour Councils in Australia: Origins, Purpose, Power and Agency, Federation Press, 2004; Jane Wills and Melanie Simms, 'Building reciprocal community unionism in the UK', Capital & Class, vol. 82, Spring 2004, pp. 59–84.
3. Doreen Massey, 'Politics and Space/Time', New Left Review, 1992, p. 81.
4. Andrew Herod, 'On Workers' Theoretical (In)Visibility in the Writing of Critical Urban Geography: A Comradely Critique', Urban Geography, vol. 15, no. 7, 1994, p. 686.
5. Lucy Taksa, 'Like a Bicycle, Forever Teetering Between Individualism and Collectivism: Considering Community in Relation to Labour History', Labour History, vol. 78, May 2000, pp. 7–32.
6. Terry Irving and Lucy Taksa, Places, Protests and Memorabilia: The Labour Heritage Register of New South Wales, UNSW Studies in Industrial Relations, Industrial Relations Research Centre, no. 43, 2002, p. 4.
7. Jane Wills, 'Space, Place, and Tradition in Working Class Organization', in Andrew Herod (ed.), Organising the Landscape: Geographical Perspectives on Labor Unionism, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1998, p. 133.
8. Ibid., p. 135.
9. The original Victorian Trades Hall Committee (THC) minute books from 1858 are held in the Melbourne Trades Hall collection in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. In the Merrifield collection, La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria, there are extensive handwritten notes from these minute books, summarising the deliberations of each meeting. See Merrifield collection, box 61. Perusal of some of the original minutes and comparison with the Merrifield notes suggests the Merrifield notes can be used as an appropriate summary of the originals. Reliance has then been on the Merrifield notes when dealing with the period 1858–70.
10. W.E. Murphy, 'Part II: Victoria', in John Norton (ed.), The history of capital and labour in all lands and ages: their past condition, present relations and outlook for the future, Oceanic Publishing, Sydney, 1888, pp. 125–26.
11. Trades Hall & Literary Institute (TH & LI) mss, p. 2, Merrifield collection; 1885 'History', The Age in Merrifield collection; Murphy, 'Victoria', p. 126.
12. Argus, 9 June 1856, p. 5.
13. Quoted in TH & LI mss, p. 2.
14. Argus, 10 May 1858, p. 5. Charles Bright wrote the poem.
15. Argus, 6 January 1858, p. 6.
16. Argus, 2 January 1858, p. 4.
17. Murphy, 'Victoria', p. 122. Numerous references were made about the (evidently unfortunate) need to meet in public houses, with the Masons being one union keen to have meetings held elsewhere. TH & LI mss, p. 3. An Argus article gave an interesting perspective on how support for a trades hall may be associated with temperance: 'the sums of money which can now be expended in public-houses on the occasions of trades meetings would go far in amount to support a Trades Hall, where the business might be conducted without the temptations which a public-house present'. Argus, 9 May 1856, p. 5. Concern was later expressed at the application for a licence for a new public house across the road from the Trades Hall in 1859, with the Trades Hall Committee, when developing the duties of the hall keeper the following year, including amongst the duties ensuring there was no 'intoxicating liquor' on the premises. TH & LI minutes, 2 September 1859, 13 July 1860.
18. Argus, 31 March 1858, p. 4, 20 April 1858, p. 5.
19. Argus, 22 April 1858, p. 5.
20. Murphy, 'Victoria', p. 135; Argus, 22 April 1860, p. 5.
21. Jupp refers to the 'Lygon Street corner' in his analysis of the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), though as the heading of the section suggests ('Small scale politics and the Lygon Street corner') as a negative rather than a strength: 'Apart from its union affiliates, many small and moribund, the Victorian ALP has few claims to being a mass, State-wide movement. Much of its activity takes place on the corner of the Lygon and Victoria Streets, Carlton, dominated by the vast and crumbling Trades Hall. Union officials meet each other daily in "the Hall", or over the road in the John Curtin Hotel (formerly the Lygon), or in the Dover, now a union office. The ACTU headquarters was directly opposite the hall, labour lawyers' offices are around the corner in Drummond Street where the party headquarters ... are now also situated'. James Jupp, 'Victoria: Left, Right and Centre', in A. Parkin and J. Warhurst (eds), Machine Politics in the Australian Labor Party, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1983, pp. 88.
22. Argus, 3 March 1859, p. 4, 28 March 1859, p. 5.
23. Reprinted from the Melbourne Herald, 25 May 1860, p. 7 in the Merrifield collection.
24. TH & LI minutes, 25 March 1859.
25. Similar patterns were found in other peak bodies. See Bradon Ellem and John Shields, 'Making the 'Gibraltar of Unionism': Union Organising and Peak Union Agency in Broken Hill, 1886–1930', Labour History, vol. 83, November 2002, p. 80.
26. TH & LI minutes, 23 September 1859.
27. Such patterns arose during later economic downturns. See P. G. McCarthy, 'Victorian Trade Union Statistics, 1889–1914', Labour History, vol. 18, May 1970, p. 70.
28. Geoffrey Serle, The Golden Age: The History of the Colony of Victoria, 1851–1861, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1963, p. 247.
29. TH & LI minutes, 16 March 1860.
30. TH & LI minutes, 16 March 1866.
31. Carlotta Kellaway, The Melbourne Trades Hall Council: Its Origins and Political Significance, 1855–1889, PhD thesis, La Trobe University, 1973, p. 282.
32. Kellaway, Melbourne Trades Hall Council, pp. 84–85.
33. Ibid., pp. 407 & 408.
34. Ibid., p. 403.
35. Daphne Spain, Gendered Spaces, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1992; Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994.
36. Spain, Gendered Spaces, p. 3.
37. Ibid., pp. 20–21.
38. Ibid.
39. Joy Damousi, 'Socialist women and gendered space: Anti-conscription and anti-war campaigns 1914–18', Labour History, vol. 60, May 1991, p. 2.
40. The Female Operatives Hall was constructed on additional land provided by a further Crown grant. Carlotta Kellaway, Melbourne Trades Hall Lygon Street Carlton. The Workingman's Parliament, Department of Public Works, Melbourne, 1988, p. 7.
41. Kellaway, Melbourne Trades Hall Council, p. 306.
42. Kellaway, Melbourne Trades Hall Lygon Street Carlton, p. 7.
43. Silvia Rogers, 'Women's Space in a Men's House: The British House of Commons', in Shirley Ardener (ed.), Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps, Croom Helm, London, 1981, pp. 50–72.
44. By the 1930s, the Female Operatives Hall was used for union office space, with the Manufacturing Grocers Union office located in the Female Hall. Its distance from the main building was evident in the description of that union's secretary walking 'from the Female Hall through the paddock into the Trades Hall building, armed with papers or simply on the way to a meeting with other unionists'. Marcella Pearce, Melbourne Trades Hall Memories, Victorian Trades Hall Council and the Victorian Branch of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, Carlton, 1997, p. 106.
45. J.T. Sutcliffe, A History of Trade Unionism in Australia, 1921 edition, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1967, p. 63; Robin Gollan, 'The Trade Unions and Labour Parties, 1880–4', Historical Studies, vol. 7, no. 25, 1955, p. 80.
46. Gollan, 'The Trade Unions and Labour Parties', pp. 80–81; Raymond Markey, In Case of Oppression: The Life and Times of the Labor Council of New South Wales, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1994; Raymond Markey, 'The Industrial and Political Significance of the Labor Council of New South Wales', Labour & Industry, vol. 7, no. 3, 1997, pp. 43–66.
47. Andrew Reeves, 'History of the Trades Hall Council. A Rift in the Seventies. Which Way?' The Recorder, no. 171, Melbourne Branch, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 1992, p. 6.
48. Argus, 15 September 1858, p.4.
49. Murphy, 'Victoria', p. 127.
50. The foundation stone of the State Library of Victoria was laid in 1854.
51. Kellaway, Melbourne Trades Hall Lygon Street Carlton, p. 5.
52. Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1977, pp. 105–107.
53. Ibid., p. 116.
54. THC minutes, 23 February 1872.
55. Kellaway, Melbourne Trades Hall Lygon Street Carlton, pp. 4, 5.
56. Murphy, 'Victoria', p. 136.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid., p. 137.
59. Pearce, Melbourne Trades Hall Memories, p. 47.
60. Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995, p. 30.
61. Ibid.
62. The establishment of the Workingman's College in 1887 furthered the educational role, something first considered by the Trades Hall Committee as early as 1860. TH & LI minutes, 29 June 1860.
63. Kellaway, Melbourne Trades Hall Council, pp. 116–117.
64. Ibid., p. 412.
65. Helen Hughes, 'The Eight Hour Day and the Development of the Labour Movement in Victoria in the Eighteen-Fifties', Historical Studies, vol. 9, no. 36, 1961, pp. 405–406.
66. Pearce, Melbourne Trades Hall Memories, pp. 19, 21–22.
67. TH & LI Inaugural address, reprinted from The Herald, 25 May 1860 in Merrifield collection.
68. Argus, 2 January 1858, p. 4.
69. Hayden, The Power of Place, p. 38.
70. Argus, 22 April 1857, p. 4.
71. Argus, 22 April 1858, p. 5.
72. Argus, 22 April 1859, p. 5.
73. Argus, 22 April 1860, p. 5.
74. Argus, 23 April 1867, p. 5.
75. Murphy, 'Victoria', p. 125.
76. Ibid., p. 64.
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