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Workplace Football, Working-Class Culture and the Labour Movement in Victoria, 1910–20
Peter Burke*
In exploring the role of workplace football in Victoria in the decade beginning 1910, this article focuses upon two — the Railways and Tramways. Examination of football in these workplaces reveals that the respective unions took what was originally an employer initiative and used it to support their industrial goals and to develop an identity of interests between workers and union. Workplace football became a vital part of working-class culture in the period before World War I. Despite being under effective union and worker control in these workplaces detractors in the labour movement remained suspicious of the role of workplace football. This stance reflected middle-class attitudes towards working-class sport as much as fears of the de-unionising effect of workplace sport.
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| At the annual meeting of the Maryborough Railway Football Club in March 1914 a prominent official of the local branch of the Victorian Railways Union, J.E. La Roche, was nominated for the position of auditor. He declined the nomination on the grounds that he could not have anything to do with a club that 'allowed a rabid non-unionist on its committee'. Most present could not countenance the appointment of the accused, self-confessed 'rabid non-unionist', Jim Price. The retiring captain of the football team (and not a railways employee) attempted to argue against the intrusion of union politics into the football club: 'I think this is coming it a bit strong. When unionism gets into football it is time to knock off'. But even though he was the club's retiring captain, the unionist voices howled him down: 'Never mind what you think, it's what we think', he was bluntly reminded.1 |
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This incident at the annual meeting of an Australian Rules football club in the medium-sized Victorian regional town of Maryborough brings into focus two aspects of working-class culture in the 1910s — football and unionism — that have often been seen as mutually exclusive. Although it was an otherwise ordinary meeting dealing with the usual minutiae and mundane issues of football club business such as financial accounts and prospects for the new season, the issue of unionism galvanised most of the members. Jim Price, after all, had sided with the employers in a bitter industrial dispute the previous year in the nearby town of Beaufort. In the face of the continuing animosity of the club members, the 'rabid non-unionist' now stepped down. |
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A distinguishing feature of the sporting activity being considered here is that it was connected with a workplace club. The use of a football club as part of an industrial campaign was not unusual for Railways sporting clubs prior to World War I (see below). In the Railways as well as the Tramways, it is apparent that employees were increasingly assuming control over workplace sport or, at least, established this part of their work life as their own cultural territory. This represented a new phase in the historical development of workplace football, which had been fashioned by some employers as one way of discouraging unionism. This article explores the role of workplace football in the Railways and Tramways in the decade from 1910 in Victoria. To understand its role, workplace football needs to be considered in its full social and economic context. Before examining football in the Tramways and Railways from 1910, it is therefore useful to review the evolution of workplace football, including its role in relationship to the working classes and the union movement. |
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From the time Australian Rules football was first codified in the early 1860s the workplace had formed one of the main institutions around which the game had developed.2 The workplace was a convenient location to make the personal and social connections around which to form teams and make contact with other likeminded young men eager to participate in football games. On occasion a team took its name or inspiration from the type of occupation, employment or employer of the participants. Blainey identified one of the early teams in Melbourne while the game was being codified as a workplace team: the 'gentlemanly' Warehousemen, who worked for the importing firms located in Flinders Lane or on the nearby Yarra River wharves.3 The Warehousemen belonged to the class that enjoyed greater periods of regular leisure, which allowed them to indulge in playing football, a game they had most likely first played at private schools in either Melbourne or England or both. Police and regimental teams were also prominent in the 1860s.4 In their seminal social history of Australian Rules football, Leonie Sandercock and Ian Turner added the Customs Officers to the small list of football teams from 1860s Melbourne that had obvious connections with the workplace.5 |
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The workplace helped to expand football beyond the exclusive circle of former private school students, who pioneered what became known as Australian Rules football, to the urban and rural working classes. The pioneers took their love of team sports with them as they moved into positions of influence as employers and community leaders and the time-work discipline requirements of industrial capitalism hastened the popularity of games such as football:
The regulation of hours of work and leisure in modern, industrial urban society put a premium on a game like football, which could be reasonably confined within a Saturday afternoon; and, as more people came to be bound by the clock and calendar, the demand for grew for entertainment to fill the regulated leisure.6
Employers were among the most prominent supporters of football. Large city-based retailers dominated the Melbourne's Early Closing Association in the early 1870s when it produced the Early Closing Almanac and Guide to Recreation. Here the Early Closing Association praised Australian football as
this manly and athletic winter sport [that] has become thoroughly popular in Victoria, and is indulged in by all classes of society, from the Member of Parliament down to minute specimens of the rising generation.7
That football was indulged in 'by all classes of society' was important to nineteenth-century employers and social reformers, who saw in football one possible antidote to growing social divisions between employees and the employers. |
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Sport also became more popular with Victorian employers who recognised social, commercial and economic benefits in encouraging their employees into respectable and socially acceptable forms of recreation outside the workplace. Many members of the working classes gained their first introduction to football through workplaces such as the large factories and railways workshops that started forming teams in the latter decades of the nineteenth century.8 As the Saturday afternoon half-holiday spread to factory employment, working-class employees were attracted to the game of football. Richard Davis has examined one such nineteenth-century employer who provided a host of sport and leisure facilities, including a popular and successful workplace football club, for his employees.9 J.S.M. Thompson of Castlemaine in Victoria may, or may not, have used workplace football as a method of increasing managerial authority and social control over his workforce, but his firm benefited in numerous ways. Workplace sport helped to retain and attract workers; it cut across union attempts to unionise the workforce by improving the identity between workers and management and securing loyalty to the firm; and, it improved Thompson's own and the firm's community image. Thompson was typical of the benevolent nineteenth-century employers and social reformers who sought to improve the welfare of employees by provision of social and recreational services and facilities. Industrial welfare, of which industrial recreation was a major element, grew in popularity as a management tool in the first part of the twentieth century.10 Prior to the turn of the century, as Nikola Balnave has identified, some employers, such as Thompson, provided formal and organised recreational activities for their employees.11 But the goal of greater national efficiency became the major motivation for the industrial welfare movement after 1900 in the context of the rise of Germany as a threat to English imperial and industrial ascendancy.12 |
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Apart from the perceived commercial benefits, many nineteenth-century employers were motivated by a desire to guide their employees in the appropriate use of their leisure time through the sponsorship and promotion of workplace sport. The rational recreation movement enlisted sport to assist in 'educating the working classes in the social values of middle class orthodoxy',13 and workplace sport became a popular method of disseminating middle-class ideals of sport. Frederick Cato, the owner and manager of the large Melbourne grocery chain Moran and Cato during the latter decades of the nineteenth, century proved himself to be a progressive employer of a social reformist bent. An ardent Methodist and philanthropist, in 1893 he was among the first retail employers to introduce six o'clock closing. Cato
trusted that none of the firm's employees would suffer by the introduction of short hours, but would utilize their time in personal improvement. A knowledge of the fine arts and sciences was within reach of them all.14
Cato's cautious comments about how his employees should use their increased leisure time shows his concern that they would not use it rationally; his attitude reflected the Protestant ethic that moral discipline needed to be applied to leisure as well as work. Perhaps in recognition that not all of their employees wished to pursue knowledge and self-improvement in their leisure time, Moran and Cato entered a team, under the name of the firm, in the popular trades football competition of the early 1900s, after an official half-holiday was introduced for the retail trade. The support given by Moran and Cato to the formation of a football club reflected the value placed on physical activities and team sports in maintaining moral discipline. The growth of the ideologies of athleticism and muscular Christianity in the Protestant schools of the Victorian and Edwardian era15 led to increasing interest by progressive, social reformist minded employers in workplace sport. |
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As Balnave found in relation to the provision of company-based recreation, there is limited evidence of union opposition to workplace football.16 Neither is there a lot of evidence of direct trade union support of football teams and clubs, though sports and games were always a popular feature of union and trade picnics. Eight Hours Day celebrations always featured sports programs. Some trade unions leaders, like employers such as Frederick Cato and J.S.M. Thompson, saw the potential of workplace sport to deter men from disreputable recreational activities such as gambling and drinking. The socially and politically conservative Victorian Grocers Employees Union (VGEU) formed in 1900 and then formed a football club in 1901,17 which participated in the trades' football competitions. The football club was not an on-field success and does not appear to have assisted the longevity of the union. Rumours were rife that employers funded the union and after it had reached a quick agreement with the grocers' association on a log of claims these accusations became more pronounced.18 In comparison with the VGEU, the trade unions associated with the Railways and Tramways in the second decade of the twentieth century were quite different in their combative relationship with employers and how they embraced workplace football. |
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Industrial recreation became increasingly popular in Australian industry during the early decades of the twentieth century,19 and there was a corresponding increase in the number of workplace football teams and competitions. In most cases, employers initiated workplace football teams. Their support could be by financial support to cover costs of ground hire or uniform or equipment purchases. Often the employer maintained at least a figurehead role in the club, such as president, but the extent of their influence over the team varied. In Victoria, workplace football in the Tramways and Railways underwent noticeable growth in terms of numbers of participants and supporters. Both of these workplaces, which employed large numbers of men, were of a new type of modern capitalist enterprise, and featured new employment and management techniques. Distinguished by their size from most other Australian workplaces, the Railways and Tramways adopted systematised industrial welfare and recreation schemes to assist the management of their large workforces. Workplace football was encouraged by employers and supported by the respective unions. The distinctive aspect of football in these workplaces was that it became aligned with working-class culture. Workplace football was embraced by the respective unions. This had a number of implications including that workplace football was used, as in Maryborough, as a way of continuing the political and industrial struggles of the workplace. |
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Tramways Union and Football | |
| In 1910 Victorian Tramways employees succeeded in establishing for the first time a union that also had the begrudging support of employers. The formation of the Australian Tramways Employees Association (ATEA) was the culmination of many years of struggle by Tramways workers,20 and the ATEA was, in fact, a genuine workers' union and not a Tramways-sanctioned employee association. Frank Anstey, the fiery Brunswick MLA and a champion of the Tramways workers, later claimed that unionist employees had experienced 'unexampled tyranny' and 'unparalleled treachery', prior to the establishment of the ATEA.21 Under Francis Clapp, the American-born founding managing director, the Melbourne Tramways and Omnibus Company had vigorously attacked employees' attempts to form a union during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. Employees often risked dismissal for their union activities.22 Clapp was among the nineteenth-century employers who had introduced workplace football, along with other welfare and recreational programs, to mitigate employee discontent and stall attempts to introduce unionism to the workplace. Following a royal commission into employee grievances in 1898, where past and present employees catalogued serious complaints about working condition,23 initiatives were taken to improve the welfare of the workers. Clapp introduced various recreational and sporting programs, including a workplace football team that played in the mid-week trades' football competition from the early 1900s.24 |
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While the new union's agenda focused upon the industrial concerns of the members,25 the importance of the recreational activities to members' lives was recognised when the Victorian Tramways Football Association emerged under the union umbrella in 1910, not long after the union had formed. Football was not the only sport or recreational activity fostered by the union. Within two years of being formally recognised by the employer and government, the ATEA was operating a host of sporting and recreational clubs, some of which had previously operated under the auspices of their employer. A cricket competition was established for the summer. The union investigated each new or pre-existing club before declaring them 'clean', that is, defined as permitting financial union members only. The Rifle Club was happily welcomed into the fold in September 1911: the union's committee of management then requested delegates to 'inform their sheds that the Rifle Club will in future be classified as clean and [to] ask their members to join such'.26 |
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Under the control of the union, workplace football was reinvigorated and a period of expansion followed. Between 1910 and 1914, up to eight suburban depot-based clubs participated in the Victorian Tramways Football Association, in which matches were played either on a Tuesday afternoon or a Wednesday morning. Prior to the formation of the union just one team had represented the Tramways, in a general workplace competition. Reflecting the growing popularity of football amongst the working classes, the Tramway clubs attracted large and enthusiastic bases of support among employees and their respective local communities. Of the recreational and sporting clubs operating under the umbrella of the union, the football clubs appear to have been the most popular, judging by the prominence of the reports in the union's journal and spectator numbers and support. Tramways football teams adopted the colours of the local suburban senior team, so that the South Melbourne team wore red and white and the Richmond depot club wore the yellow and black of the local Victorian Football League team. Or, at least, most of the players wore the local colours; in 1915 the association had to remind players that 'at least thirteen players must play in the club's colours as umpires are complaining of the impossibility of giving decisions at times owing to the negligence of this rule'.27 |
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Aside from the practical difficulties caused by guernsey shortages, the adoption of the local colours and use of local ovals placed tramways football in the local sports culture and assisted to develop the identity of the tramways workers with the local community. By 1910 Melbourne's premier senior football competition, the Victorian Football League, was based on inner suburban clubs. These clubs provided working-class suburbs with a new and potent identity.28 As most Tramways employees were shift workers they were often required to work Saturdays afternoons when the bulk of the population attended the local senior team's matches. In lieu of reduced opportunities to 'follow' their local Victorian Football League or Association club, Tramways workers instead used their local Tramways team to demonstrate their support for the community. Adopting the local colours helped to locate the club within the working-class milieu. The clubs themselves looked beyond the immediate confines of their workplace for support. Often local 'businessmen' featured in clubs as patrons and senior officials. The Malvern club was presided over by a local tobacconist in their premiership year of 1921. Tobacconist shops were centres of male working-class sport in the early twentieth century; here 'sportsmen' congregated, the proprietor often doubled as a bookmaker and small-time sporting entrepreneur. Best-on-ground for Malvern in the 1921 Grand Final was Cyril Gambetta, at that time one of the most sought-after footballers in the Victoria.29 His presence raises the issue of professionalism in the Tramways Football Association. |
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As the first decade of Tramways football progressed, suspicions surfaced that some clubs were 'ringing-in' non-Tramway players for payment or other form of rewards. In 1918 it was reported that Brunswick, the premier club, had turned over £150 in the 1918 season of which the suspiciously large amount of £100 went on expenses.30 Critics of Brunswick referred to the team sarcastically as the 'Brunswick "half and half"',31 as half of the players were not Tramways employees and were also, coincidentally, regular senior players in Melbourne's senior football competitions. Although professionalism was a characteristic of working-class sport of the time, some union and Football Association figures were unimpressed with the increased presence of non-employees in some teams. According to unionists and supporters of amateurism, the Association was
formed for the purpose of bringing men in the sheds together, and that they could get to know each other and bring about feelings of brotherhood that should exist between all unionists.32
The watering down of this fraternal objective also led the union to criticise attempts by a 'Tramway United Football Club' to represent the tramways in another workplace competition, where non-union teams participated.33 Professionalism, and its attendant over-emphasis upon winning, threatened to undermine the avowed aim of the unionists to encourage fraternity amongst unionists. Another aspect of Tramways football that was likely to lead to disapproving comment in the Tramways Journal was violence between Tramways footballers. Player violence elicited a disapproving tone in the football reports published by the union journal: 'There were a few players on both sides who occasionally forgot they were playing football, and who started to turn their attention to the "noble art"' was a typical comment during the 1913 season.34 |
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In his seminal work, American Welfare Capitalism, Brandes establishes that American employers saw workplace sport and recreation as an instrument to link workers, company and nationalism. Employers used industrial recreation to teach values that led to loyalty to the company: 'in a broader sense, they were elements which composed in part what businessmen defined as Americanism'.35 In the case of Tramways football, where the union was in control, sport was intended to instil values of class and union loyalty. The union's denunciation of professionalism and violence in Tramways football had moral and industrial overtones. Through supporting workplace football clubs, the union was in essence promoting a variation of a view of sport in which winning was not important; sport was a social glue, binding members of the working classes. This view was often an anathema to much of the working class, which instead invested sport with an alternative value system that placed a priority upon winning. This is not to suggest that unionist footballers forgot their politics inside the football club: at Brunswick's 1918 Tramways premiership celebration many pro-unionist sentiments were expressed and the night concluded with an enthusiastic rendition of 'Solidarity Forever'.36 |
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Just as employers often used workplace sport as a method of promoting the company and attracting better quality workers, the union benefited from its close association with Tramways football. Key figures in the union encouraged the provision of union-controlled social, educational and recreational activities. Frank Anstey, always an advocate for Tramways workers, was elected president of the union in 1913, following an early period of internal disorder.37 His advocacy for victimised tramways workers and his efforts to establish a wages board 'made him something of a working class hero among the men at the Brunswick depot'.38 He also helped to instill in the union the importance of building a distinctly working-class culture among the members through social, educational and recreational activities. |
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Anstey recognised the particular centrality of sport to working-class culture. While Brunswick's state parliamentarian, he also served as president of the local senior football club, where his two gifted political proteges, John Curtin and Frank Hyett, also played in the early 1900s. Anstey regularly entertained sporting clubs at his home. These were not just the acts of a glad-handing local parliamentary member. Throughout his early political career, organisations that Anstey fronted and promoted, such as the Tocsin clubs and the Victorian Labour Federation, also provided a focus for social and recreational activities. For Anstey and other contemporary activists, 'the true spirit of the working class could be identified and mobilised much better through popular songs, stirring recitations, proud banners and rousing speeches'.39 The football club was one of those institutions that helped to develop and maintain to working-class identity. |
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Just how successful was Tramways football in improving the popular appeal of the Tramways Union? The popularity of the football leads to the impression that the union benefited from the arrangement. Football was a popular player and spectator sport for all of the 1910s in the Tramways, and there was never any doubt that this was a union, and not an employer, initiative. Strict rules that players needed to be financial members of the union would have encouraged waverers to join, albeit perhaps reluctantly. Owing to rising complaints of non-financial union members playing, it was decided in the 1913 season that any club playing a man who was the equivalent of more than six weeks in arrears in union dues would forfeit the match.40 Football delivered more members but, apart from this practical benefit, it also assisted the workers to identify with the union. Football and unionism were promoted as complementary activities of working-class life. |
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Railways Union and Football | |
| Football in the Railways, as in the Tramways, underwent a resurgence of popularity before World War I. There was no doubting football's increasing popularity with the Railways workforce. By 1914 it was estimated that 37 Railways employees played senior football with League or Association clubs in Melbourne.41 This is a significant proportion of the total number of League or Association players, and represents the equivalent of almost two whole teams. That the Railways workforce was at least 8,000 strong in 191142 does put it into perspective though. By 1910 football was a major part of working-class leisure and Railways workers were as avid participants, spectators and followers as any. |
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Although Railway workers had played football previously, there was a noticeable increase in football activity in the years leading up to World War I. At the 1914 annual general meeting of the Victorian Railways Union it was reported that the Victorian Railways Football Club had a membership of 262, compared with 120 the previous season.43 Even in Sydney, where Australian football was a minority sport among the local working classes, a team based on the Redfern workshops played in a local competition during the 1913 season.44 Unfortunately the local football authorities adopted a 'district football system' before the 1914 season, which militated against workplace teams, as it required clubs to use players from a designated district.45 A New South Wales team did, however, participate in the National Railways Football Carnival in 1914. |
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Football had been present in railway workplaces, as was noted earlier, since at least the 1880s. In metropolitan areas during the late nineteenth century Railways teams regularly played against other Melbourne workplaces and factories.46 Many medium and large regional centres throughout Victoria (and other states) also boasted Railways football clubs. In the early 1900s organised cricket and football competitions based on different sections of the Railways operated. During 1906 a Victorian Railways Metropolitan District Football Association was formed and included teams drawn from suburban stations, workshops and goods yards. Over five hundred spectators attended the first game of the season between North Melbourne Loco and Melbourne Yard47 but, owing to an insufficiency of teams, the association did not re-form for the 1907 season.48 Instead Railway clubs such as North Melbourne Locos, the 1906 railways premiers, played in the mid-week Bona Fide Wednesday Football Association, and at other workplaces there were also picnic matches played for charity from time to time, such as when a team representing the Newport workshops played Williamstown in aid of the local hospital.49 |
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In part the rising popularity of Railways football reflected the growth of football in Melbourne, but the establishment of the Victorian Railways Institute and the mobilisation of the Victorian Railways Union helped to spread football's popularity in the workforce. The opening of the Victorian Railways Institute in 1911 provided the practical support necessary for organisation of regular football activities. The Institute, modeled on English and American initiatives, sought to provide the 'accommodation and equipment necessary to meet the educational, physical and social requirements of the staff'.50 Initial establishment costs of the Victorian Railways Institute, which opened in 1910, were funded by the not inconsiderable amount in fines paid by staff for disciplinary breaches since 1904 and a matching amount from the Railways.51 This arrangement of matched financial contributions from employees and employers was also reflected in the structure of the Institute. Unlike in New South Wales, an elected council, enabling genuine representation of railway workers, managed the Victorian Railways Institute.52 Greater representation of workers in the governance of the Institute ensured that it better reflected workers' interests and increased their influence over the direction of Institute activities. At times, especially in the country, union and Institute branches were indistinguishable. The union and Institute branch meetings were the focus of the men's social and recreational life.53 Workplace football flourished under the umbrella of the Railways Institute. Financial and organisational assistance was forthcoming to support footballers and other sporting and recreational clubs. Railways employees were assisted to participate in team sports by appropriate rostering. Employees, in some cases, could even get time off work to participate in Railways football clubs.54 |
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Growth in Railways football during this decade mirrored the development of the Victorian Railways Union. At the time of the bitter railway strike of 1903, the railwaymen were represented by a plethora of unions of varying sizes and scope,55 a situation that contributed to the failure of the strike. The multitude of unions arose from the craft and regional basis of their formation; various occupations and regions had their own unions, and, as well, there existed an employer-sponsored mutual benefit society. By 1920, however, only two railways' unions existed, the Victorian Railways Union and the Enginemen and Firemen's Union. It was Frank Hyett, as secretary of the Victorian Railways Union between 1911 and 1920, who was the catalyst for the reorganisation of the Railways unions. Hyett achieved the monumental task of consolidating the disparate small Railways unions as an industrial union.56 Hyett encouraged the socialist education of the unionists, mobilised them for effective industrial action and politicised the organisation.57 Meanwhile the VRU basked in the reflected glow of the elite sporting success that Hyett achieved. At the 1915 the annual conference, he was congratulated on selection for the Victorian cricket eleven in the 1914–15 season.58 |
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Hyett was a brilliant and inspiring union organiser, a great supporter of worker education and the Institute, and he was also a great 'sportsman'. Football, unionism and politics were parallel threads in Hyett's life. While a member of the Victorian Socialist Party in the early 1900s, Hyett had played football in the local senior team, Brunswick, alongside future Labor leader, John Curtin.59 Curtin befriended Hyett and the two became the closes political allies and proteges of Frank Anstey, who was, as mentioned above, for a time, the president of the Brunswick Football Club and the ATEA. This trio made an essential contribution to the intellectual and organisational development of the political and industrial labour movement; their contribution to the Victorian working-class movement at this time was unequalled.60 Curtin and Hyett embodied the ideal that the socialist movements and sport could be mutually beneficial. They had played cricket together for the Victorian Socialist Party's Ruskin Cricket Club. A Ruskin football club was formed in 1910 to 'help the party shed some of its scrawny character by becoming a bit more manly'. However, it lost every match in its first season, including one by 17 goals.61 |
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Hyett recognised the industrial benefits of involvement in football; it presented opportunities to break down the craft-based barriers among unionists and workers, which had frustrated the industry-wide organisation of railways workers. Railways football thus assisted in the delicate political task of uniting the various unions. Hyett was latterly concerned with creating a national railways union and the National Railways Football Carnival, first held in early 1914, served as a precursor to its establishment. Coincidentally, the first national conference of railway unions, which was instigated by Hyett's Victorian Railways Union, followed the inaugural football carnival.62 The Australian Railways Union was eventually formed in 1920, the year following Hyett's premature and lamented death.63 At this time, his influence was growing in wider football circles as well. Since 1914 he had been a committee member of Carlton Football Club, and at the time of his death he was the senior vice president and recently appointed VFL delegate of the Carlton Football Club. The club acknowledged his 'vast organising and brilliant talents' in a tribute after his death in the Spanish flu pandemic.64 In all the ensuing emotional outpouring that followed his death, one of the most poignant tributes came when his special funeral train steamed slowly past the Glenferrie Oval on its way to the Box Hill Cemetery. A football match was in progress, but the game was instantly suspended and all the players stood at attention, and the spectators on the ground bared their heads in silent token of respect.65 |
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Maryborough Railways | |
| The Maryborough branch of the Railways union in central Victoria was moulded in the socialist vision of Frank Hyett. By 1914, it had established a radical reputation for looking out for its members and other local unionists. The branch served 'as a social club and a safety net for those out of luck, as well as keeping a watchful eye over its members' economic and political interests'.66 Sporting clubs associated with the Maryborough railways were not reluctant to pursue industrial issues through the club and on the field. |
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The incident in 1914, described at the beginning of this article, where unionist members of the Maryborough Railways Football Club ousted a 'rabid anti-unionist', was not an isolated example of Railways unionists using workplace sport to make an industrial point. The summer before the incident at the football club, Maryborough Railways cricketers had also been embroiled in a dispute with local anti-unionists. Six Railways cricketers had been selected in a Maryborough team to play against nearby Ballarat in a representative match. The Maryborough six withdrew from the team after learning that a Mr N. Davey, a fellow resident of Maryborough and director of a mine in nearby Beaufort, was to replace another team member who had suddenly fallen ill. A few months earlier, Davey had engaged non-unionists to replace striking unionists at his mine; the Railways cricketers now refused to play with this employer of 'blacklegs'.67 While Maryborough may not have been a typical example, there were instances in other regional towns of railways workers carrying their union loyalties onto the sports ovals. Several years before some Railways unionists in the western district town of Colac declined to play against the visiting MCC team because another Railways worker, 'who was a loyalist at the time of the [1903] strike' was selected. The men notified the club committee that their union would not permit them to play if the 'free-worker' goes on the field.68 |
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In Melbourne as well, Railways football clubs tended to identify with their community and class. The Railway United football club in Port Melbourne had formed around the turn of the century and had quickly developed into a successful club on the field, due to its strong community connections. Although it was a Railways club, the club was woven into the fabric of this local working-class community. When support was being rallied in early 1914, supporters were 'reminded that in helping the club they are helping the Port generally'.69 By 1916 the team was more often than not referred to as the Port Melbourne Juniors and was a de facto 'local' team as the senior team had been forced into recess with the Victorian Football Association's decision to cancel competition because of the war. After winning the Victorian Junior Football Association's first grade premiership for a third time in 1910 they claimed the Wren Shield, named after the competition's benefactor, John Wren, the well-known, and even infamous, sponsor and promoter of working-class sport.70 |
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Workplace football in the Tramways and Railways played a unique role in comparison with some other workplaces. Here Railways and Tramways workplace football contributed to the development and success of the unions. In most other contemporary workplaces, the employer controlled football and the teams thus assisted in maintaining hegemony over the workforce. A few weeks after the Railways football incident in Maryborough, a factory football team in nearby Castlemaine became embroiled in a dispute over unionism. This incident warrants a detailed consideration here to demonstrate the gulf between clubs where employees controlled workplace football and those where the employer controlled it. |
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Non-union Workplace Football | |
| Players of the Foundry Football Club of Castlemaine started the 1914 season with a bitter industrial disagreement still fresh in their memories. Simmering workplace tensions came to a head just before the commencement of the second round of the season. 'Ginger' Williams, one of the club's best players and a worker at Thompson's Foundry, was the subject of the unionists' ire. Most of the boilermakers at the foundry had been on strike since late 1913 over a disagreement on whether the process of 'crown staying' was their work or that of skilled labourers, as the firm asserted.71 The foundry remained intransigent on the issue and, as a result, the 12 striking boilermakers were forced to sever ties with the firm in early February of 1914 and seek employment interstate. Of the 12 strikers, 9 were footballers and Williams was accused by other team members of not supporting his team and work mates in the strike as he had allegedly promised to do. He was reported to have been working as a labourer at the time of the strike, but on the 'men going out he was put into one of the vacant positions'.72 The workers focused their anger over the failure of the boilermakers' strike on his treachery. |
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The team met prior to the second match of the season to finalise the team selection. A few days beforehand, the committee had delayed the final selection of the team knowing that a group of players was refusing to take the field with Ginger. At the pre-game meeting he denied the allegations but the weight of player opinion bore heavily against him. After discussion the players were asked to vote on whether he should be selected. By 17 votes to 6 he was excluded from the team. Williams then left. Dr. Thompson of Thompson's Foundry, nephew to the aforementioned J.S.M. Thompson, resigned his presidency of the club, as it was impossible for him to 'act in that position any longer if you will not play with a man considered fit to be employed by the firm I am connected with'.73 |
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In the days following the Williams expulsion, there was further trouble at the foundry. On the Monday after the game, Ginger Williams refused to work with his assistant, a unionist and leading footballer. In the evening, Williams was assaulted in the street and seven of the football players 'severed their connection' with the foundry.74 The Boilermakers Union dispatched an organiser to Castlemaine from Melbourne to look into the trouble, as some of the workers who had 'severed' their connection with Thompson's following the decision to oust Williams from the team were not believed to have been involved in the 'football trouble'. The Boilermakers organiser found that some 'men had been put off work who had not been concerned in the football trouble, as they had been believed to be ... all the concerned were reinstated'. Although at 'one time it looked as if the old club would go under ... better counsel prevailed' and the differences were amicably settled.75 By the following game, Williams had rejoined the team along with six other new players, and Dr Thompson had resumed the presidency. |
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Like many Victorian factories in the early 1900s, Thompson's Foundry had unionised recently. Prior to a Wages Board determination coming into operation, Thompson told the local press,
no unionists were employed at the foundry, but then an organiser was sent up and worked so successfully that all but three of the boilermakers were influenced to join the union. Then the union began to dictate.76
This involvement of the union obviously aggravated Thompson. The arrival of unionism not only threatened his ascendancy over his workers in the workplace but also threatened to undermine his wider influence over the employees outside the foundry gates and on the football field. But the fact that the football club dispute was resolved so quickly, on the employer's terms, reflected how deeply embedded was his benevolent program of industrial welfare. The incident revealed that the football team assisted in maintaining identification between the employers and employees and in rebuffing the union. Unlike the situation in the Maryborough Railways football club, the employer used the football club as one way of maintaining his authority and control over the workforce. Thompson's was the second-largest employer in what was a medium-sized country town. The firm, and town, was still small enough for the employees to personally know their manager, who lived next door to the factory. By way of contrast, in the railways management was removed, anonymous and dispersed. But, as Davis has commented: 'Despite their emphasis on sport to identify workers and management, they [the Thompson family] lived as merchant princes in splendid houses such as J.S.M.'s Kaweka'.77 |
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Workplace Football and Eight Hours Day | |
| An episode such as that at Thompson's caused some consternation for sections of the labour movement who were suspicious of the potential of workplace football to undermine unionism. This was most evident in early 1914 when the Railways and Tramways footballers sought to play their sport on Eight Hours Day. Railways workers were confronted with a dilemma when the Victorian Trades Hall Council refused permission for the playing of the final game of the Railways Interstate Football Carnival on Eight Hours Day. Other workplace footballers, such as the Tramways, experienced the same dilemma when their controlling bodies also scheduled games against the wishes of their own union.78 In addition this ban by the Trades Hall also interfered with the Victorian Football Association's (VFA) plan to play a round of matches on the same day. The Eight Hours Day celebrations were the most significant event in the Trades Hall calendar and approaches to them to relax the restrictions on playing of sport on the day were refused. No distinction was drawn between the VFA proposal and the Railway workers football carnival or the Tramways footballers. Trades Hall insisted on the principle of no organised sport on the day, except at their sports carnival during the afternoon. |
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Although the VFA claimed disingenuously that they were only giving football fans what they wanted — a spectator sport on a public holiday — the Trades Hall Council was indignant at the proposal. The VFA argued that the 'playing of football matches on the afternoon was really a great advertisement for the cause',79 but at a meeting with the VFA, Trades Hall representatives described the proposal to play the matches on Eight Hours Day as a 'vicious principle, and an attempt to injure a great and glorious cause' and as an attempt to 'filch away the day from those for whom it was granted'.80 Eight Hours Day commemorated the nineteenth-century union pioneers who had established the principle for working men of a working day that consisted of balanced amounts of work and rest and recreation: eight hours work, eight hours recreation and eight hours rest. This achievement had contributed greatly to the development of organised sport and football by the creation of increased leisure time so the frustration of the sporting unionists was palpable. The justification of the labour movement leadership for refusing to yield to the requests by the VFA and the railways workers had a semi-religious quality expressed in this reflective contemplation of the achievements of the eight hours pioneers and future directions of the movement:
The Eight Hours Day is rightly a day of rejoicing by organised labor. But it should be more. It ought to be stock taking day for the worker, who should look back into the past, and mark the stages of his progress towards his goal, and see whether that progress has been real and not apparent.81
The editorial writer reflected that section of the Trades Hall leadership that saw the success of the eight hours campaigns as providing opportunity for self-improvement and increased political awareness, rather than just sporting indulgence. Although it was the VFA that attracted the most vehemence from Trades Hall, the end result was that they, and the Railways footballers, acquiesced and rearranged their fixtures in order to respect the wishes of the Trades Hall Council. The Tramways Football Association 'amicably accepted' the union's wishes not to play football on Eight Hours Day.82 |
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The ascetic attitude of the Trades Hall towards the football enthusiasts over the issue of playing on Eight Hours Day could be interpreted as a display of anti-sport or anti-football bias among the affiliates. Undoubtedly some of the affiliates viewed football spectating and playing as a means of distracting workers from class and wage struggles, and others simply preferred more cerebral or home-based recreation activities. But the Trades Hall Council's interest in promoting Eight Hours Day more likely indicates that the Trades Hall leaders saw the importance of vigorously protecting their own newly formed traditions and of uniting workers of all trades and sectors of industry for at least one symbolically important day. The establishment of the principle of the Eight Hours Day in the 1850s had, of course, pre-dated the rise of organised sport in Victoria. The local working classes had embraced organised sport in the latter decades of the 1800s and early 1900s, a development that disappointed some of the Eight Hours pioneers, who originally foresaw greater opportunity for higher cultural and educational pursuits through increased leisure time.83 |
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The 'labour aristocrats' and craft unions that dominated the Trades Hall shared some of the middle-class disdain for the popular, and sometimes crass, spectator sports of the early twentieth century. Elements of the labour movement leadership witnessed the concern about the apparent corrupting influence of sport widely evidenced by violent and unruly behaviour by players and spectators, commercialisation, allegations of gambling, episodes of 'playing stiff' and, of course, professionalism.84 All these features were apparent in senior football, and, to a lesser extent, in junior levels of football where workplace teams participated. Before the rapid popularisation of workplace football in the early 1900s the labour aristocracy had evinced concern about the degradation of sport. The Tocsin newspaper, the mouthpiece for the labour intelligentsia, had regularly published its extensive platform, which included at number 63, the general aim of the 'purification of sport'.85 In comparison with the other objects on the platform, this notion was pure idealism, because, as has been noted elsewhere, the purification of sport was the only item on the platform that could not be realised without alteration to social life.86 Most of the items on the Tocsin platform could (and would) be achieved by legislative changes but the 'purification of sport' was a far more utopian objective. That sport was obviously impure as a result of development of professionalism was a complaint of the middle classes and adherents to the athleticist ideology. Bernard O'Dowd, poet and Tocsin editor, shared the athleticist's disdain for popular sport, but his concern sprang from a different intellectual tradition. He opposed most popular sports and was concerned at the 'deleterious consequences of popular culture on people'.87 Football, especially, threatened to unleash mob passions. His position was quite the reverse of other political and industrial leaders, such as Hyett and Anstey, who saw popular sports as a legitimate use of working-class leisure time. The emotive opposition to playing of workplace sport on Eight Hours Day was not based upon crude application of Marx and the notion of 'sport as the opiate of the masses', but rather on the conviction that the playing of sport was a debasement of the original lofty aims of the eight hours pioneers. The Trades Hall's determined stand on the issue of alternative attractions on Eight Hours Day was also based upon a suspicion of the role played by workplace football in undermining unions in the workplace. Although in the case of the Tramways and Railways the respective unions effectively controlled the workplace football competitions, the suspicion remained. |
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The dispute over Eight Hours Day briefly exposed division in the labour movement between the 'new unions' and the older, mainly craft-based unions: the so-called labour aristocracy, which dominated the Trades Hall. In the stridency of the Trades Hall response to football on Eight Hours Day there was also an element of craft union antagonism towards the ascending, politically radical industrial unions. Protecting the sanctity of Eight Hours Day ensured that the local working classes were reminded and educated about the achievements of the union movement, and the craft unions' key role in these. With the heightened political and class consciousness of the period, union leadership was sensitive to any incursion into their day of commemoration by non-labour movement interests. For this one day, workers of all classes could be brought together to commemorate past advances of their movement and likely future advances, and to be reminded of their commonality of interests. Non-union organised activities threatened to dilute this goal. In New Zealand the equivalent commemorative day had been rendered meaningless by the involvement of employers, temperance campaigners, commercial interests and militarists.88 In countries further afield as well, such as the United States of America, the success of 'Labor Days' in uniting the working classes, if only for the day, relied heavily on reducing the presence of alternative attractions.89 In Australia there were also examples of employers sponsoring alternative attractions to labour movement rituals.90 This suggested to Trades Hall leaders that there was a campaign to undermine the popularity and influence of the labour celebration. |
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Conclusions | |
| Attitudes towards workplace sport within the labour movement were varied and even in unions such as in the Tramways and Railways, the support for workplace football was not unconditional. Although embraced by the Railways and Tramways unions in the period before World War I, workplace football remained controversial within the wider labour movement. In the Tramways and Railways workplace football was recognized by the respective unions as a strong presence in working-class life and important to the process of class identification. In these cases, the unionists harnessed workplace sport to assist in the expansion and rejuvenation of the respective unions. |
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In many respects the close identification between Tramways and Railways unions and workplace football at this time was reflection of a unique moment in football and labour history. Football's increasing popularity with the working classes was never so obvious as then. It was a central aspect to working-class life and culture. Unionism also appeared to have a similar role in working-class culture, providing an institution around which workers could identify, unite and stake out their own cultural territory. |
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Endnotes
* This article has been peer-reviewed for Labour History by two anonymous referees.
1. Maryborough and Dunolly Times, 30 March 1914.
2. Peter Burke, 'Football and the Workplace: A Brief History of Workplace Australian Football, 1860–1939' in Bob Stewart, Rob Hess and Matthew Nicholson (eds), Football Fever: Grassroots, Maribyrnong Press, Hawthorn, 2004, pp. 51–67.
3. Geoffrey Blainey, A Game of Our Own, Information Australia, Australia, 1990, p. 24.
4. Robin Grow, 'From Gum Trees to Goalposts, 1858–1876', in Rob Hess and Bob Stewart (eds), More than a Game: An Unauthorised History of Australian Rules Football, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1998, p. 56.
5. Leonie Sandercock and Ian Turner, Up Where, Cazaly? The Great Australian Game, Granada, South Australia, 1981, p. 24.
6. Ibid., p. 29.
7. Early Closing Association, Early Closing Almanac & Guide to Recreation for 1874, Melbourne, 1874, p. 62.
8. Robin Grow, 'The Victorian Football Association in Control, 1877–1896', in Hess & Stewart (eds), More than a Game, p. 56.
9. Richard Davis, 'Softgoods, engineering and sport: J.S.M. Thompson in New Zealand and Victoria, 1868–1910', Sporting Traditions, vol. 20, no. 1, November 2003, pp. 1–16.
10. Christopher Wright, The Management of Labour: A History of Australian Employers, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1995, p. 21–22.
11. Nikola Balnave, 'Company-sponsored recreation in Australia: 1880–1965' Labour History, no. 85, November 2003, p.132.
12. Phil Mosely, 'Factory football: paternalism and profits', Sporting Traditions, vol. 2, no. 1, November 1985, p. 27; Geoffrey Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and Political Thought in 1899–1914, Blackwell, Oxford, England, 1971.
13. Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1978, p. 35.
14. Carlton Gazette, 3 June 1893.
15. Bob Stewart, 'Athleticism revisited: sport, character building and Protestant school education in the nineteenth century', Sporting Traditions, November 1992, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 35–50.
16. Balnave, 'Company-sponsored recreation in Australia', p. 144.
17. Victorian Grocers Employees' Union minutes, 16 April 1901, Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Canberra.
18. Grocers Assistant, 14 September 1912.
19. Balnave, 'Company-sponsored recreation in Australia', p. 133.
20. See Alison Churchward, 'Attempts to form a union: The employees of the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company, 1882–1898', Labour History, no. 42, May 1982, pp. 27–39.
21. Argus, 11 February 1913.
22. Churchward, 'Attempts to form a union', p. 39.
23. Royal Commission appointed to enquire into the grievances of employees of the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company Limited, 1898, State Library of Victoria.
24. See Peter Burke, 'Trades football in Melbourne 1896–1909', From Middle Class leisure to Working-Class Sport', Sporting Traditions, vol. 19, no. 1, November 2002, pp. 1–16.
25. See the Argus, 10 November 1910 for the union's platform, which contained basic industrial concerns.
26. Australian Tramways Employees Association, Committee of Management minutes, 14 September 1911, State Library of Victoria. The term 'clean' refers to membership of such affiliated clubs as comprising of union members only. The important criterion in affiliating clubs was that the members were all unionists.
27. Tramway Journal, 24 May 1915.
28. Robert Pascoe, The Winter Game: The Complete History of Australian Football, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1995, p. 73.
29. Russell Holmesby, Heroes With Haloes: St Kilda's One Hundred Greatest, Playright Publishing, Sydney, 1995, pp. 98–99.
30. Tramway Journal, 20 January 1919.
31. Tramway Journal, 14 May 1921.
32. Tramway Journal, 4 October 1920.
33. Tramway Journal, 4 October 1920.
34. Tramway Journal, 4 July 1913.
35. Stuart Brandes, American Welfare Capitalism 1880–1940, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1976, p. 82.
36. Tramway Journal, 29 January 1919.
37. B.R. Nugent, Frank Anstey in Victorian Politics, MA (Hons), University of New England, 1973.
38. Peter Love, Frank Anstey: a political biography, PhD Thesis, Australian National University, 1990, p. 196.
39. Ibid., p. 94.
40. Tramway Journal, 25 April 1913.
41. Argus, 21 April 1914.
42. Charles Fahey, 'Unskilled male labour and the beginnings of labour market regulation, Victoria 1901–1914', Australian Historical Studies, 119, 2002, pp. 143–160.
43. Railways Union Gazette, 21 February 1914.
44. Although Australian Rules football is the most popular football code in Victoria, and has long been present in New South Wales, the rugby codes are the more popular winter sports in Sydney and New South Wales.
45. Daily Telegraph, 3 September 1913. The district or electoral system was intended to stop trafficking in and the payment of players.
46. Robin Grow, 'The VFA in control', p. 56.
47. Victorian Railways Magazine, 1906.
48. The failure to re-form this competition may also be a result of an internecine dispute between the mass railways union and the other railways unions during 1906. This dispute created ill-feeling between sections of the railways workforce and may have prevented the re-organisation of the football competition. See James C. Doherty, 'The Rise of Railways unionism: A Study of New South Wales and Victoria, circa 1880–1905', Master of Arts thesis, Australian National University, 1973, p. 70.
49. Williamstown Advertiser, 13 April 1907.
50. Victorian Railways Magazine, 6 September 1905.
51. 1910 Report of the Victorian Railways Commissioners, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 1910, vol. 3, State Library of Victoria, p. 343.
52. Martyn Lyons, 'The Library in the Workplace: The New South Wales Railway Institute Library', in A History of the Book in Australia 1891–1945: A National Culture in a Colonised Market, John Arnold and Martyn Lyons (eds), University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2001, p. 189.
53. Alison Churchward, , 'Inside the fence: Unionism in the Victorian Railways, 1903–20', MA, University of Melbourne, 1983, p. 29.
54. Maryborough and Dunolly Times, 3 April 1914.
55. Churchward, 'Inside the fence', p.26; Lorraine Benham and John Rickard, 'Masters and Servants' in Strikes: Studies in Twentieth Century Australian Social History, John Iremonger, John Merritt and Graham Osborne (eds), Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1973, pp. 1–25.
56. A. Scarlett, 'Frank Hyett', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 9, 1891–1939, Bede Nairn (ed.), Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1983.
57. Churchward, 'Inside the fence', p. 98.
58. Victorian Railways Union, Fourth Annual Conference 23–24 April 1915, minutes book, University of Melbourne Archives. The minutes recorded that although 'this was quite apart from Union affairs, it was gratifying to know that their General Secretary was capable of holding his own in any field of activity'.
59. Coincidentally, the Brunswick Football Club was the only Victorian Football League or Association club with roots in workplace football. Football was first played in Brunswick in 1865 with the formation of the United Brickyards and Potteries Club. In 1879 this club became Brunswick but their workplace origins were reflected for a time in the industry colours of red and white adopted by the club and the nickname of the 'Pottery Workers', which stayed with the team until the 1890s. See Helen Penrose (ed.), Brunswick: One History, Many Voices, Vic Press, City of Brunswick, 1994, p. 171.
60. Lloyd Ross, John Curtin: A Biography, Sun Books, Netley, 1983.
61. Letter, L.P. Jones to Ross, 7 September 1945 Ms393, Box 30, Folder 6, Lloyd Ross Papers, National Library of Australia. Quoted in David Day, John Curtin: A Life, Harper-Collins, Sydney, 1999, p. 140
62. Victorian Railways Union, Fourth Annual Conference.
63. A. Scarlett, 'Frank Hyett'.
64. Carlton Football Club, 1920 Annual Report. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Lionel Frost in locating this reference.
65. Railways Union Gazette, June 1919.
66. Eddie Butler-Bowdon, In the Service? A History of Victorian Railways Workers and Their Union, Hyland House, South Yarra, 1991, p. 23.
67. Mount Alexander Mail, 17 April 1914.
68. Argus, 21 November 1912.
69. Standard, 9 May 1914.
70. James Griffin, John Wren: A Life Reconsidered, Scribe, Carlton North, 2004.
71. Mount Alexander Mail, 13 February 1914.
72. Argus, 25 May 1914.
73. Mount Alexander Mail, 25 May 1914.
74. Mount Alexander Mail, 27 May 1914.
75. Mount Alexander Mail, 30 May 1914.
76. Mount Alexander Mail, 13 February 1914.
77. Richard Davis, 'Softgoods, engineering and sport', p. 12.
78. Tramways Union, 9 March 1914.
79. Geelong Advertiser, 22 April 1914.
80. Argus, 23 April 1914.
81. Labor Call, 23 April 1914.
82. Tramways Union, 6 April 1914.
83. Hughes describes the atmosphere of social and political radicalism surrounding the shorter hours movements of the 1850s and the vibrant 'cultural life that was being developed to counteract philistines who were only concerned with material and political growth... If working men were to participate in such elevating cultural and educational pursuits they needed leisure. This was the recurring theme of the demands for shorter hours, and the basis of broad social support for the movement'. Helen Hughes, 'The eight hour day and the development of the labour movement in Victoria in the 1850s', Historical Studies, vol. 9, May 1961, p. 398.
84. Grow 'The Victorian Football Association in Control. 1877–1896' and Hess 'The Victorian Football league Takes Over, 1897–1914' in Hess and Stewart (eds), More Than a Game, and Sandercock and Turner, Up Where, Cazaly?, chapters 4–6.
85. See for example Tocsin 2 October 1897.
86. Victor Kennedy and Nettie Palmer, Bernard O'Dowd, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1954, p. 110.
87. Frank Bongiorno, 'Bernard O'Dowd's Socialism', Labour History, no. 77, November 1999, p. 99.
88. See Bert Roth 'Labour Day in New Zealand' in John E. Martin. and Kerry Taylor (eds), Culture and Labour Movement: Essays in New Zealand Labour History, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, 1991, pp. 304–314.
89. Michael Kazin and Stephen Ross, 'America's Labor Day: The Dilemma of a Workers Celebration', Journal of American History, vol. 78, no. 4, 1992, pp. 1294–1323.
90. Erik Eklund, 'Intelligently directed welfare work'?: Labour management strategies in local context, 1915–29', Labour History, no. 76, May 1999, p. 141.
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