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Containing Discontent: Anti-Chinese Racism in the Reinvention of Angus Cameron
Phil Griffiths*
Angus Cameron is usually remembered as one of the pioneers of labour representation, a carpenter elected to the New South Wales parliament in 1874 who became a leading advocate for legislation to stop Chinese immigration. Historians have seen this link as evidence that racism was pushed from below by the working class. This article shows that Cameron turned to anti-Chinese agitation at the very point he broke with the labour movement, and argues that he most likely did so in the hope of saving his political career. In particular it looks at Cameron's infamous Select Committee Report into Common Lodging-houses, and the crisis in Cameron's parliamentary career that preceded the establishment of the select committee. It also suggests that key members of the Sydney ruling class had an interest in deflecting attention from the appalling condition of rental housing in Sydney, and that Cameron's report relieved some of the pressure on them.
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| Racism towards immigrants in Australian history has been overwhelmingly presented as a working-class project.1 However in late-colonial Australia, as in 2001, such racism was skilfully used by politicians to contain and deflect the disappointment and discontent that working people felt about governments. One of the most destructive pieces of anti-Chinese propaganda published in the late colonial period was the Report of a Select Committee of the New South Wales (NSW) Parliament into Common Lodging Houses, published in August 1876.2 The most sensational parts of the report focused on the Chinese community of Sydney, painting a lurid picture of European women, addicted to opium, forced to sell themselves to Chinese men to get a supply of the drug. All this happened, it was reported, in dark, dirty, overcrowded opium dens, where 'the debauchery and immorality must be something frightful'.3 For years after its publication, the select committee report was used in parliamentary debates and public meetings to 'prove' the 'immorality' and 'viciousness' of Chinese men.4 This was despite the NSW Police rejecting its evidentiary substance. |
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In this article, I argue that this inflammatory and dishonest report was constructed and used to rescue the political career of its chairperson, Angus Cameron, Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA). A carpenter by trade, Cameron is remembered as the first official trade union candidate elected to an Australian parliament. Some historians have seen Cameron's anti-Chinese agitation as a reflection of the concerns of his working-class constituents.5 Here I argue instead that Cameron's turn to anti-Chinese racism came at the very point at which he broke with the labour movement. Cameron's motion in parliament to set up the select committee was moved on 14 March 1876. The very next day, 15 March, he outraged his trade union supporters and wider liberal opinion by refusing to vote against the Robertson government's Education Bill, an action which was widely seen as a betrayal of the movement towards secular education. As a result Cameron faced a hostile mobilisation of trade unionists in his electorate and within two weeks, had broken with the Trades and Labour Council of New South Wales (TLC). I suggest that Cameron's turn to anti-Chinese agitation was part of an attempt to build a new, middle-class constituency to replace the trade union element alienated by his actions. |
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This perspective challenges existing historiographical approaches which have tended to represent members of parliament with working-class origins, or those elected for significantly working-class electorates, as authentic voices of working-class agendas, concerns and politics. Andrew Markus argues that after his break with the TLC, Cameron's 'power base still lay in a working-class constituency and he generally expounded the views of his constituents'.6 No evidence is provided to justify this assertion. In his history of the early Labor Party in NSW, Bede Nairn sees 'Cameron and Garrard, especially' constituting 'a leaven of working-class radicalism' as a result of their trade union backgrounds.7 In documenting the imposition of laws restricting non-European immigration into the Australian colonies, Charles Price repeatedly refers to electorates being working-class when describing the actions of certain Members of Parliament (MPs), whilst never referring to the socio-political composition of other electorates.8 This is also an approach pursued by Ann Curthoys, who describes seven NSW MPs involved in the anti-Chinese campaign of 1878 as 'a group of M.L.A.'s, usually representing working class electorates'. Of the seven, John Davies was a former Cabinet minister and the President of the Protestant Political Association, perhaps the most powerful, ruling-class political machine in NSW; John Macintosh was a businessman and ally of Davies; John McElhone was a rich merchant, exporter and Sydney City Councillor; Thomas Hungerford was a major pastoralist who in 1883 owned three million acres in the Gulf country and one million acres in South Australia near the Queensland border; and Daniel O'Connor was another major businessman and Sydney City Councillor.9 Bruce Mansfield sees men in Parliament with 'working-class origins, or association with the Labour movement', as having 'some qualifications to be considered spokesmen for Labour'.10 |
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Even when Labor parties were formed in the 1890s, however, the connection between Labor MPs and the interests and desires of working-class constituents proved unstable and problematic.11 The link is even more tenuous before 1890, with few of these putatively 'labour' politicians ever joining the real Labor parties. Ray Markey has challenged the methodology of traditional labour history, focused on working-class institutions and leadership, arguing that it 'distorts an overall interpretation of events because of its tendency to take historical statements and actions at their face value' and thus, '[b]y a curious process of historiographical osmosis, the statement of a particular leader, or leadership, becomes "the attitude of labour"'.12 This is especially true with regard to the history of anti-Chinese racism in nineteenth-century Australia. |
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This article specifically challenges Bede Nairn's two biographies in which he posited Angus Cameron as introducing 'a new type of radicalism' into parliament, in contrast to the existing 'dilettante radicalism'. Nairn omitted Cameron's 1876 desertion of secular education, which Nairn himself described as 'the most important political problem of the 1870s' and wrongly declared that 'Cameron had no violent break with the TLC'.13 I suggest that the appearance of anti-Chinese parliamentary reports and anti-Chinese articles in mainstream newspapers should not be automatically taken as evidence for '[t]he first stirrings to the presence of Chinese in the general community', as Markus has done.14 Instead historians should at least investigate the possibility that they reflected the self-interest of the particular groups and individuals that sponsored, wrote and published them. |
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Angus Cameron: From Workers' Representative to Factional Operative | |
| Angus Cameron was a young man of 27 when he was elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly for the seat of West Sydney in December 1874, as the candidate of the TLC. The TLC had only been set up in 1872 and in its early years was inexperienced and unstable. The minutes of the council frequently show unions affiliating or disaffiliating, and there was a substantial turnover of delegates and officials. Cameron's career at the TLC was brief and meteoric. He was first sent there on 10 June 1874, elected secretary barely three months later, and was instrumental in moving for the TLC to develop a plan for parliamentary representation.15 In November 1874, the Parkes government was unexpectedly defeated after two years in office and an election declared before the TLC's plans could be finalised. A special TLC meeting chose Cameron as the TLC's candidate for East Sydney, an electorate represented by four members of parliament and the first to vote in a process that took several weeks to complete. While unsuccessful, Cameron performed so well that he was promptly nominated for West Sydney, which also returned four MLAs. This time he was elected.16 |
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The entry of the TLC into parliamentary politics reflected both a practical agenda, and a rising sense that workers' interests were not properly looked after by parliaments that were dominated by capitalists and lawyers. Unionists wanted the eight-hour day, an end to assisted immigration, factory and trade union legislation, laws to protect the funds of trade unions, and reformed land laws to facilitate a life of independence for those poor people prepared to work hard. All these required action by the legislature. The non-payment of members of parliament made it almost impossible for any tradesperson or labourer to contemplate standing, whether as an individual or labour movement representative, and so payment of members was a crucial demand, along with a fair electoral system. All of this was buttressed by a belief that only working class representatives could understand the problems faced by ordinary people; that, 'we desired to have one or two men in the House who could look at social questions from the same point of view as ourselves.'17 This was the vision of labour representation which Angus Cameron embodied when he won his seat in 1874.18 |
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In order to sustain their member of parliament, the TLC voted Cameron the substantial salary of
£5 per week.19 But he almost immediately joined the faction of the premier, John Robertson, and over the coming years he would parlay his political position into a parallel career in business – which included the secretaryship of building societies and a partnership with James Fletcher, a mine owner and proprietor of the Newcastle Morning Herald.20 As the officers and members of the TLC worked diligently to raise money for their Labour Representation Fund, the minutes of the TLC do not show Cameron attending a meeting until six months after his election.21 By then, there had already been a complaint about Cameron's role, 'asking certain questions in the Assembly anent the defective locomotives supplied by Mort, Vale & Lacy etc'. Cameron's parliamentary question had been framed for the purposes of party advantage, enabling Robertson to throw mud at the previous Parkes administration, rather than to advance the cause of any group of workers. The Boilermakers Union was concerned that it 'could have a baneful effect with the general public'.22 Cameron's attachment to the Robertson faction was also demonstrated in February 1876, when maverick MP, John McElhone, demanded from the government a return showing all relatives of ministers employed in the public service. Cameron's response to this unexceptional allegation of abuse of patronage was to declare that a minister 'could certainly be excused for recommending any of his personal friends or relatives'.23 |
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The first crisis in Cameron's relationship with the TLC came just a year after he was elected, in February 1876. The issue was Robertson's Agreements Validating Bill, which gave legal force to labour contracts entered into outside NSW. An employer who agreed to employ someone and pay their passage to NSW, could demand a guaranteed period of labour of up to five years. Such contracts of indenture were uncomfortably similar to those under which Pacific Island labourers were employed in Queensland. They allowed employers to hire people at wages lower than those prevailing in the colony and to impose whatever working conditions they chose. The penalty for not fulfilling the labour contract was two years solitary confinement, a remarkably harsh punishment. In the Hunter Valley coal strikes of 1879 and 1880 the Act was used to recruit strikebreakers.24 It was an extraordinary bill for a labour representative to support and was bitterly opposed by the union movement and most of the radical section of the parliament, as 'framed in the interests of capitalists'.25 |
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When Cameron spoke in favour of the Bill, the TLC called him to account. In a bitter and angry meeting, Cameron argued that the Bill could put an end to massive government funding for large-scale assisted immigration. He suggested it would put the onus on employers to find the labour they wanted and so guarantee immigrants work when they arrived in NSW. This was disingenuous and the delegates were not mollified. Frank Dixon, President of the TLC, 'thought it the strongest engine in the employers' hands & would be greatly abused'; John Leeson from the Sydney Iron Trades Labourers Association (and Vice-President of the TLC until the previous September) 'generally condemned Mr Cameron for the position he had assumed as well as for his actions' and that 'if such Act became Law it would be a death blow to the eight hour movement'. Delegate Anderson thought that 'Mr Cameron's position with the Council' was an even more important issue and that Cameron 'should consult the Council on all questions of importance & stated that he thoroughly disagreed with the Action of the Representative in regard to this measure.' These views were supported by all who spoke. Cameron declared his opinion unchanged and, as a compromise, agreed to abstain from voting when the issue came again before Parliament.26 Two months later, Cameron claimed that abstaining on this Bill was the only thing he regretted.27 Cameron's final rupture with the official labour movement came just a few weeks later over Robertson's Public Education Bill. |
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Angus Cameron's Great Crisis: To Save Robertson? Or Stand Up for Secular Education? | |
| The conflict between secular and denominational education was one of the great social questions in all antipodean colonies in the 1870s and 1880s and the focus of widespread and sustained agitation. Most liberals, radicals and labour movement activists wanted education to be secular, compulsory and free. Robertson had raised expectations at the 1874 election with the promise of a new education bill, and this had helped make him premier. George Dibbs MLA boasted that it was only the support of members of the secularist Education League that kept him in power.28 But Robertson created problems for his government when, in February 1876, he appointed the socially conservative Alexander Stuart treasurer.29 Stuart was a leading banker, and for this reason the appointment was supported in the mainstream press. But he was also a leader of the movement to retain religion and denominationalism in education, and had won his seat in Parliament in 1874 largely on this basis.30 Robertson thus divided his own government on the burning social question of the time. This division was reflected in the Education Bill Robertson proposed in 1876. The sixth clause increased the size required of a denominational school to receive government funding, which would mean closing dozens of church schools and blocking funds any new ones. The eleventh clause of the legislation, however, made it easier for individuals to set up small, and hence possibly denominational, schools in rural areas. Either way, the Bill did not set up the secular education system that all classes increasingly wanted and almost all liberals saw it as a betrayal. |
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The result was a major crisis. Robertson's government would fall if it failed to pass the Education Bill, but the Bill proposed was deeply unpopular with many of Robertson's supporters in parliament. Robert Wisdom absented himself from parliament rather than vote for it, Angus Cameron repeatedly declared his intention to cross the floor, and George Dibbs actually voted against it.31 An immense amount of pressure was exerted on Cameron to vote with the government, or at least not against it. He also faced conflicting pressure from the Education League. Whether by government trickery or through his own cowardice, Cameron agreed to 'pair' with another Robertson supporter, Joseph Phelps (who was on his way to America), and left the parliamentary chamber when the vote was taken on the second reading of the Bill. Thus Cameron's potentially hostile vote was effectively eliminated and the second reading narrowly carried.32 |
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By neutralising Cameron's vote, this 'pairing' became the subject of controversy. Cameron's explanation was treated with derision in parliament, disbelief in his electorate and contempt in the press. When he returned to the chamber there was uproar at his action. Radical Opposition MP, David Buchanan, declared Cameron's political career 'at an end.' Outside parliament, Cameron faced mounting anger. Within two days there was a preliminary meeting in West Sydney to discuss his behaviour and a decision taken to call a public meeting. This was held on Thursday 23 March, 1876 with many leading members of the TLC present. The meeting was large and stormy. According to the Evening News:
The bulk of those present were evidently persons who held strong opinions upon the question of working mens' [sic] representation in the legislature, those in favour of it predominating. The scene throughout the evening could only be described as one of 'wild excitement,' and several times there were rushes to the platform by the friends of speakers whom opponents sought to interrupt.33
Cameron did not attend. The official motion was moved by J.J. Horan, a tailor and activist in the radical movement and seconded by John Leeson, the Iron Trade Labourers' delegate to the TLC. Leeson had spent his spare time soliciting money from unionists to pay Cameron's salary. The motion condemned Cameron for breaking faith with his supporters. An amendment sympathetic to Cameron was moved by Frank Dixon, who had been both secretary and president of the TLC, and seconded by Jacob Garrard, a delegate from the Engine Fitters' union and himself later elected to parliament. No vote was taken as the meeting broke up in disarray. From this distance it is impossible to be certain, but it appears that Cameron had the support of a minority of union leaders, some of whom were prominent in his re-election campaign in October 1877. In the TLC itself a letter arrived from Cameron's own union, the Carpenters and Joiners, calling on the TLC to take some action over Cameron's parliamentary activity. The letter was shelved. |
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Meanwhile, Cameron took the initiative, calling a large public meeting for 1 April 1876 to explain himself. With the premier, all of the ministry except Stuart, and ten other MPs on the platform supporting him, Cameron set out to explain his 'pairing' with Phelps and his advocacy of secular education. More importantly, Cameron used the meeting to attack the very people who had campaigned to get him elected into parliament and who had raised a considerable sum of money to keep him in comfort while parliament sat.
He would tell them what all this opposition sprang from – not that he paired off with Mr Phelps – not that he had been a supporter or opponent of any school of political opinion, but because some half dozen miserable pettyfogging men like this – (the speaker pointed to Mr. Leeson) – contributed something towards his support...
Well, to these men who found fault with him, and contributed to his support, who wanted to be eternally walking across his path like political cockroaches (cheers), he had a word to say...he would be the servant and the serf of none from that hour forth... He thought it was the highest honour that was ever paid to mortal men in this country that they should put him into Parliament and think him worth paying for...[but] for the future he asked them to keep their assistance. (Cheers.) He would much rather descend to break stones and have his freedom.34
Needless to say, breaking stones was definitely not on Cameron's agenda. Neither, anymore, was the vision of a labour representative that had once inspired him and others in the trade unions: Edmund Burke's conservative notion of parliamentary independence, which Cameron had also embraced, triumphed completely.35 |
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Cameron attended one more meeting of the TLC, summoned there by the people who were still paying him £5 per week. Cameron told them that he was quite happy to maintain the existing financial and political relationship; however this 'would have to be upon this distinct understanding, that upon all and every question in Parliament Labour or otherwise, the Council should not control him, but he should speak and vote as his conscience dictated'.36 The council responded by terminating his salary. |
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The vision of parliament including labour representation did not die with Cameron's apostasy, but it would be over a decade before the TLC again involved itself officially in nominating candidates for parliament. In the immediate future, leading individuals from the labour movement involved themselves in electoral campaigns organised through bodies such as the protectionist Working Men's Defence Association (WMDA), which stood a number of leading trade unionists in 1877, including three for West Sydney. For his part, Cameron now faced a battle to hang on to his new life of importance as a member of parliament. |
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Cameron Turns to Anti-Chinese Agitation:
The Select Committee into Common Lodging-Houses | |
| On 14 March 1876, the day before the vote on Robertson's Education Bill, Angus Cameron successfully moved in the Legislative Assembly that a Select Committee be set up to inquire into the conditions in Sydney's common lodging houses. Its report would include one of the most hysterical attacks on Chinese people published in colonial Australia. |
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The manipulation involved in Cameron's Select Committee can be seen by comparing it with the parallel investigations of the Sydney City and Suburban Sewage and Health Board (SCSSHB). The board had been set up by the NSW government in April 1875 as a result of the extraordinarily high death rate in Sydney. In January 1875, deaths had exceeded births and infant mortality was almost 20 per cent. Many believed that poor sewerage systems and dirty and inadequate fresh water supplies were part of the reason.37 In two years the SCSSHB undertook a large number of major investigations into water supply and sewerage, and also branched out with a large-scale investigation into overcrowding and its effect on sanitary conditions in the city and suburbs of Sydney. This investigation, conducted by the 'No 11 committee' of the SCSSHB, involved its members in conducting hundreds of personal inspections closely investigated the housing in a particular street, laneway, or cul-de-sac, and resulted in a report of around 100,000 words in length. Whatever its faults, it was a massive and detailed exercise and the report is a major source for understanding the social conditions of Sydney at the time.38 The overwhelming impression from the evidence gathered was of extensive poverty and a profound neglect of water supply and sewerage provision; of sewerage in Alexandria, Redfern and Waterloo seeping through sandy soil into wells from which people were drinking because there was no other water supply; of large numbers of people living in tiny houses in laneways forced to share a small number of open toilets whose contents spilled into their common yards and sometimes the city's gutters; and of people living in dirty, unhealthy buildings in disrepair because landlords refused to spend money fixing them. These were no minor issues; a glance at the Registrar-General's report for the three months to December 1875, for instance, shows that over 40 per cent of all deaths in the quarter were due to infectious diseases, the kind spread by insanitary conditions.39 |
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A small part of the SCSSHB's investigation exposed crowded Chinese-run workshops, and these attracted the outrage of the committee. This was vented in a special progress report on common lodging-houses adopted on 4 February 1876.40 A small number of European women living with Chinese men were also found. This clearly worried the authors of the report who were agitated to find that some of these European women had become addicted to opium. Indeed, in their minds, opium addiction had become the means by which Chinese men had been able to establish personal and sexual control over these women. While the progress report on Chinese workshops was not published separately, it seems probable that Cameron knew of it because of his close involvement in the Robertson government to which the report was submitted, and because most of the small number of witnesses to appear before the Select Committee had worked on the No. 11 committee's investigations.41 |
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In contrast to the extensive work of the No. 11 committee, Cameron's Select Committee into Common Lodging-houses met just three times to take evidence, on 24 March, 30 March and 10 May. Four meetings in a row lapsed due to lack of a quorum. As a result, the select committee took evidence from only a small number of council officials and police. For the committee's consideration, Cameron, as chairman, produced a short report which included two points attacking Chinese people:
Your Committee cannot close this Report without particularly directing the attention of your Honorable House to the revolting and almost incredible statements contained in the evidence with regard to many of the Chinese Lodging Houses in this City.
Your Committee are of opinion that unless strong action is brought to bear to remedy the immoralities alluded to, that restrictive legislation with reference to any increase of Chinese population to this country will become an absolute necessity in the interest of all other sections of the people of this country.42
The second of these recommendations was rejected, but it signalled that Cameron intended using the report for a more general attack on Chinese immigration. |
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The cynicism of Cameron's exercise became further apparent in the timing of the publication of his report. The last meeting of his select committee was two and a half months after the final meeting for the taking of evidence. This was just in time for its report to reach parliament and, hence the newspapers, two weeks before the massive and far more credible report of the SCSSHB. The result was that Cameron's report stole the thunder from the Sewage Board report. Indeed, newspaper reports were couched in such terms that it seems as if the SCSSHB had simply produced evidence to back up Cameron's concerns.43 Cameron's report was disproportionately focused on accusations of Chinese immorality and the slanting of subsequent press and parliamentary discussion in that direction meant that the massive, core problems uncovered by the SCSSHB report were largely ignored.44 |
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Part of the select committee's report attacked the condition of the six-penny lodging houses of Sydney, and they do seem to have been appalling places – filthy, overcrowded and unsafe. Cameron had expressed concern about them long before. But the most sensational part of the report, and the part on which most public debate focused, concerned Chinese opium dens. In previewing the report, the Evening News published an extract from the evidence of Michael Chapman, a former Mayor of the City of Sydney:
I have seen women with them there under the influence of opium, and it has such an effect upon them that they are quite helpless. I believe that immorality to a great extent is practised. These unfortunate girls, when questioned as to why they remain with these Chinamen, say they cannot help it – they must get opium, and no white man will go to the expense of supplying them...the crowding at night with females is very great, and the debauchery and immorality must be something frightful. It was nothing unusual to see females even at 4 o'clock in the afternoon under the influence of opium, lying on a bench with one or two Chinamen in the place, and quite helpless.45
This evidence created a furore and ensured that media discussion of the report was dominated by the Chinese question. The evidence of Richard Seymour, the Sydney City Council's Inspector of Nuisances, was even more lurid:
I have gone into a room and found a small lamp in the centre, and a Chinaman with a woman between his legs, naked all but a petticoat, and another Chinaman in the same position on another part of the stretcher; in the next room the same, and in the next the same. These were white women, some of them married women, and others women of the town... In another place there was a Chinaman had a girl on the table, sitting up, with his trousers down, and one of the girl's legs over his shoulder; she was under the influence of opium, and he was using her – having connection with her – and seven or eight Chinamen waiting at the door to do the same to this same woman ... [Another woman] said, 'They do what they like with us while we are under the influence.' I asked her if she could not refrain from it, and she said 'No, we cannot keep away from it.' The way our women are used by these men is something beyond description.
Seymour also claimed to have found 'girls in Chinamen's houses from about 10 years of age up to 20', many of them diseased.46 |
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Both sets of allegations were wild distortions. In evidence to the SCSSHB investigation, Chapman only ever claimed to have seen one woman under the influence of opium, and only once. His comment to the select committee that, 'It was nothing unusual to see females ... under the influence of opium' could only apply to that same, one woman. Chapman's evidence to Cameron's select committee was given on the last day it took evidence, after four fruitless attempts at meetings. It was clearly going to be the last time the committee met for evidence. The day before appearing, Chapman went with his colleague, Grundy, back to the infamous Durand's Alley, between Goulburn and Pitt Streets, Sydney. This was where he had supposedly seen the (one) European woman insensible under the influence of opium, and trawled his way around Chinese residences in another courtyard. They found no sensational scenes, but reported two European women in a Chinese man's house, one of whom admitted being addicted to opium. Given all the circumstances, it seems possible that Chapman was trying to dredge up some last minute juicy evidence of Chinese immorality to feed Cameron's purposes. |
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It also seems likely that the involvement of the Council's Inspector of Nuisances, Richard Seymour, was self-interested. He was in charge of keeping Sydney clean, yet Shirley Fitzgerald, in her detailed account of living conditions in Sydney from 1870–90, paints a picture of Seymour as ignorant of the causes of disease, as timid and ineffective in his work, and distracted by the three hours he spent every day auctioning fish at the Council's fish market. At the time the inquiries were set up Seymour was a man under pressure for his failings.47 |
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When the select committee report was debated in parliament, Henry Parkes – the Leader of the Opposition, who had long opposed Chinese immigration and who would in the future legislate to restrict it – immediately stood up and said he did not believe the evidence. This was because he did not trust some of the key witnesses and he intimated that these were Seymour and Dr Dansey, the Council's medical officer. Premier Robertson then tabled a report from the Inspector-General of Police, Edmund Fosbery, which discredited key parts of the evidence. Seymour had been instructed to show the police all houses where offences against morality were supposed to have happened. The police found nothing exceptional. On the issue of Chinese men using opium to seduce European women, the Inspector General of Police reported:
Opium smoking is indulged in to a considerable extent [ie by Chinese men]; European women, however, do not take to the practice until they have lived some time with Chinamen, usually not until after they have become their wives.
Having called Seymour to account, Fosbery was able to report that:
I understand from Mr. Seymour that the circumstances he described were not the subject of recent observation, but that he noticed them chiefly several years ago, and that he could not say that any such abominations were now taking place.
Fosbery then launched his own attack on the credibility of Cameron's select committee exercise, complaining that:
I must regret that the opportunity was not afforded me of suggesting the names of police witnesses to the Parliamentary committee. Two of the officers examined had but a brief experience of police duties in Sydney, and others who could have given valuable testimony were not examined.
Fosbery informed Robertson and parliament that some girls found in a Chinese house were not 15 years old, as supposed by acting sub-Inspector Johnson, but considerably older.48 |
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If Cameron had proposed his select committee under the pretence of concern for the welfare of residents of common lodging-houses, he largely abandoned that pretence once the report had been formally adopted by parliament. Nine days later he launched an adjournment debate to demand that the government bring immoral Chinese to justice, to prosecute them for 'the outrages committed by Chinese on women and young girls in Sydney'. Cameron attacked Parkes for his response to the evidence, pointing out that Chapman, the former Mayor, and Robertson, the Inspector of Waterworks, had given similar evidence to that of Seymour. And he launched a broad-ranging attack on Chinese people:
The influx of Chinese here was favoured only by capitalists, who believed in cheap labour. One hundred of these Chinamen would do more to demoralize this community than a thousand Europeans. He had, since this evidence was taken, had one or two cases narrated to him, in which mothers in the city of Sydney have had to guard their young children from being ruined by these men. He had also received communications from Forbes and the gold-fields, telling him that many an honest man and woman had reason to curse the day when these Chinese villains obtained an entrance into this country.49
Cameron was beating a drum that had a familiar past and a long future. |
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Cameron Gathers Establishment Support | |
When the Legislative Council considered Cameron's report, the day before its credibility was attacked in the Legislative Assembly, its members – the archetypal defenders of capitalism – took up the anti-Chinese theme with as much gusto as Cameron himself. The wealthy Thomas Holt moved the adjournment of the Upper House to bring the select committee's report to the attention of his fellow councillors, and to demand a response from the government. In his opinion:
The Government ought to stamp-out the horrid vice brought in by these nasty disgusting foreigners. He was surprised that there was no law sanctioning whipping. The cat-o'-nine-tails would have far more effect upon a Chinaman than the hangman's rope.
John Campbell agreed. 'He had always been opposed to the influx of these Chinamen', he claimed, and had wanted to make them pay a £10 poll tax but had been over-ruled. Sir Alfred Stephen regretted that the Government would not allow this. A number of members complained that the evidence itself, as published in the report, would threaten public morality. All who spoke wanted the Government to act against Chinese people.50 |
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Consistent with events in parliament, it was the establishment paper, the Sydney Morning Herald, which manufactured the greatest alarm and racist hysteria about the Chinese people of Sydney. On 10 August it published a diatribe from the New York Herald on the Chinese of California. The next day it used its editorial to give sanction to the false arguments of the select committee, which, it said, had shown that:
in Sydney, as elsewhere, the abominations of the Chinese are growing apace. Few people need to be told that where Chinese are allowed both to herd together in large numbers, and to have as large a license as they choose, the grossest immoralities and the blackest filth are the usual consequences.51
The details in the report, the Herald, warned, were too horrible to be published, but should nevertheless 'arouse the indignation of the public.' The Chinese who came to Australia were of the lowest class, and tended to 'herd together after the manner of swine rather than of men'. China itself was a 'vast human ant-hill' from which 75,000 had poured into San Francisco. The result was that:
The Chinese centre of San Francisco is described as 'a cesspool of filth, a hell of vice and crime,' a centre of 'poverty, misery, squalor, filth, and disease,' such as is to be seen no where else...and unless prompt and suitable checks are interposed, the evils which have resulted from the crowding together of large numbers of Chinese elsewhere will exist and thrive on a smaller scale in the leading cities of these colonies.
The Herald recycled the lie that girls of 10 or 12 years of age were being systematically seduced by these 'inhuman wretches'. It counselled hesitation before legislating for a poll tax or prohibition of Chinese immigration, instead suggesting close supervision of small Chinese communities as well as large, and the passing of special legislation to control them. Faced with the premier discrediting the evidence on which Cameron's report was based, the Sydney Morning Herald set out to defend the indefensible. In its editorial of 22 August 1876, it argued that:
If Mr. Seymour's statements are inapplicable to the present condition of things ... it will still remain that there are special dangers to be provided against in the case of the Chinese population; and that so long as these aliens are allowed to establish communities of their own, to crowd together in the midst of the city, and to live after their own fashion amongst a people with whom they cannot coalesce, they should be held subject to special supervision and control.
The paper further chastised Parkes for his attack on Seymour in parliament claiming that the latter had 'pointed to possibilities' against which the government had to guard.52 |
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We can only speculate on the reasons for the enthusiastic support Cameron's report received from such key sections of the conservative establishment. Shirley Fitzgerald has described the unwillingness of either the Sydney City Council or the NSW government to build the expensive infrastructure necessary to guarantee a constant supply of clean drinking water, and to dispose of sewage and other pollution. In addition:
Landowners and speculators were interested in ensuring that future subdivisions could occur with a minimum of expense or regulation. Property owners and landlords were interested in ensuring that rates be kept to a minimum, and in discouraging projects such as sewerage works, where the cost would fall to the owner. Manufacturers were interested in polluting the environment as freely as possible, and in ensuring that nuisance inspectors were not over-zealous in their work ... The colonial government, in the face of increasing urban chaos and growing public ill health, was reluctantly forced into providing the services it had hoped to delegate to local government.53
Members of the Legislative Council and their friends who were city landlords might have been grateful for the way Cameron's attack on Chinese people deflected the findings of the SCSSHB investigation, and the responsibility of landlords for them. Indeed, Cameron's focus on common lodging-houses generally, even apart from the Chinese question, shifted attention from the neglect of landlords and the Council as revealed in evidence given to the more substantial inquiry. It is, nevertheless, impossible at this stage to establish a definite connection or the existence of a strategy here. |
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What is indisputable is that the attack on the credibility of Cameron's select committee report did not stick. For years afterwards his select committee report was referred to by legislators and anti-Chinese agitators as if it represented an honest warning of the dangers of Chinese communities.54 In Australia's colonial parliaments, select committees were an important device for allowing the part-time politicians to investigate crucial political, social and economic issues. This gave them considerable authority. Cameron's report had drawn on the evidence of important people, or, as the Evening News put it before the debate over the report's credibility: 'The witnesses are all intelligent and thoroughly reliable men' and Seymour, in particular, 'a man whose position and experience guarantee the correctness of his statements'.55 Cameron's report also reinforced the message coming from the United States, from a racist report of a US Senate Committee, and in books like William Hepworth Dixon's White Conquest.56 While the image of the Chinese seducer already existed in the white colonial imagination in 1876, his report gave the backing of authority and investigation to those who sought to racialise or exclude Chinese people. |
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Coincidence or Consequence? | |
| We cannot know all the motives behind the establishment and course of the Select Committee into Common Lodging-houses of 1876, but there is solid circumstantial evidence that saving the parliamentary career of Angus Cameron was central. It is known that Cameron faced a profound crisis in the week before 15 March 1876. On the one hand, the government he supported faced defeat if the Education Bill went down. In speaking to the bill in parliament on 8 March, attacking Robertson's measure, Cameron regretted that the result of his vote could well benefit 'the greatest counterfeit in the country [ie Parkes] – to send him back to place and pay'.57 On the other hand, to assist Robertson, even if just by absenting himself from the vote, would bring down the wrath of all who supported secular education, and these included the trade union movement which had put him into parliament and paid his generous salary, and the Education League which had played a significant role in getting him elected. |
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Four days before the second reading vote on Robertson's Education Bill, the free-thought (and anti-Robertson) weekly, The Stockwhip, reported a rumour that the government had got 'Cameron to promise to stay away when the division is called – but he swears it is false'. The paper was not convinced and called on voters to 'mark, not those who vote openly, but the absentees'.58 Cameron himself described having 'led a complete life of misery; he was in the Pandemonium for some days' after agreeing to pair off, saying 'he was harassed all over the house on the issue'.59 John Macintosh MLA corroborated this, describing Cameron as having been 'hunted' during the few weeks before the vote.60 |
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In this frenzied environment, it is difficult to imagine Cameron focusing on the unfortunate existence of the unrespectable, itinerant and marginalised poor who turned to common lodging houses, as one of his major concerns.61 Having decided on a course that would outrage both his labour movement and Education League supporters, it is easy to imagine him looking for an issue or controversy to help him hang onto support. It is difficult to believe that Cameron – a relatively new member of parliament – would have moved for a Select Committee on such a non-urgent social issue at such a moment of turmoil for him personally; unless, that is, it was related to that turmoil. For their part, once they had survived the immediate crisis, the Robertson government moved quickly to ditch the Bill that had nearly brought them down.62 |
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The traditional methodology of Australian labour history would suggest that Cameron was responding to – or attempting to ground himself on – the anti-Chinese sentiments of working-class people in his electorate. This is certainly possible. The generalised nature of hostility to Chinese immigration amongst working-class people can be seen in the speed with which anti-Chinese movements could at times mobilize. This hostility was sustained and encouraged by mainstream newspapers such as the Evening News, the largest-circulation daily in Sydney, which was saturated with racism.63 However, this case study suggests there are strong reasons to question the standard approach. |
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The traditional means of seeking action on local nuisances was to appeal to the Sydney City Council, and all such requests were directed through the office of the Town Clerk. For the years 1875–78, I could not find a single complaint from a member of the public against any Chinese person.64 Neither is there any mention of the question of Chinese immigration in the minutes of the TLC from 1874 to September 1876. Nor was Cameron's select committee report discussed by the TLC.65 Chinese immigration was not mentioned in reports of the electoral campaigns waged by the WMDA in 1877. As late as January 1878 there was no mention of opposition to Chinese immigration in the Manifesto of the protectionist Political Reform League.66 While there were occasional anti-Chinese comments at public meetings in 1877, the first example that I could find of Chinese immigration being a campaign issue for plebeian political organisations in Sydney is in April 1878. Thomas White, the Seamen's Union leader, advocated the stopping of all Chinese immigration in response to moves by the Australasian Steam Navigation Company (ASN) to replace European seafarers with Chinese. Then, when the Manifesto of the Political Reform Association was launched in May 1878, it followed the TLC in including an anti-Chinese clause.67 The only indication of non-elite concern about Chinese immigration came from a petition signed by just 206 people, presented by Cameron to the Legislative Assembly when he launched his adjournment motion on Chinese immigration in August 1876.68 |
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By way of contrast, within ruling-class circles, there was a rising concern about Chinese immigration in 1876–77, largely focused on the arrival of thousands of Chinese miners as part of the Palmer River gold rush. As the Queensland government attempted to discourage Chinese immigration in 1876 by increasing license fees for Chinese miners and businesses, the Sydney Morning Herald worried about the influx describing it as 'unnatural', a 'danger to public morals and health', a concern for all the colonies and a crisis requiring special laws to control.69 Cameron's report was seen as illustrating some of the dangers of the Chinese immigration into Queensland.70 Whatever the state of working-class thought on the Chinese question, Cameron's select committee report certainly intersected with a growing concern in the ruling class. |
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It is rather harder to assess the impact of the select committee report on Cameron's survival as a politician. It certainly gave him enormous prominence less than two years after entering parliament and he referred to it during his re-election campaign.71 However by 1877 he had a stronger claim for working-class votes. In May that year, Cameron had played a leading role in igniting a mass labour movement campaign against assisted British and American immigration. The unions and the newly formed WMDA built a significant campaign against it in the months leading up to the 1877 general election, largely contributing to the defeat of both Parkes and Robertson in their metropolitan electorates. Cameron's leading role in parliament on this issue no doubt helped secure his re-election. Unlike his successful bid for parliament in 1874, Cameron now had the advantages of incumbency and a respectable middle-class committee, supported by a few key trade unionists. It seems probable that, over the previous year, he had been able to use anti-Chinese racism and his opposition to assisted immigration to rebuild popularity amongst working-class voters, while also building a new constituency for himself amongst some of the better-off. Ray Markey and Ann Curthoys have described ways in which racism could facilitate the construction of cross-class populist alliances.72 The Sydney Morning Herald covered his campaign generously, while largely ignoring that of the WMDA: Cameron now had the financial resources to run modest press advertisements. Having a 'safe' and respectable worker like Cameron in parliament tended to reduce the alienation of the working class from that institution, and blunt the cry that organised labour needed its own people there.73 It is possible that Cameron's membership of an Orange Lodge was important in constructing a support base for him.74 At the same time, he undoubtedly retained the appeal that a successful and respectable former worker had for other working men. Whatever the reasons, Cameron emerged triumphant, gaining 2,378 votes and coming second of the four members elected. The WMDA was unsuccessful, but far from disgraced, with Thomas White gaining 1,602 votes.75 |
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After his re-election in 1877, Cameron carved out a significant parliamentary career. Re-elected for West Sydney in 1880 and 1882, he was later elected for Kiama as Parkes' candidate in 1887, and for Waverley in 1894 and 1895. In 1878, he was elected Chairman of Committees, while his greatest personal triumph came in 1879 when he brought together the NSW government, the iron trades capitalists and the unions to finalise a contract for 100 locomotives to be let to NSW firms.76 That triumph itself indicated how far Cameron had shifted: he was now acting as a go-between, not a labour movement representative. It also helped undercut protectionist attacks on his free trade politics. The greatest beneficiaries of the deal were the employers, for it seems that the unions had made promises regarding wage restraint. |
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Cameron went on to play a prominent role in the anti-Chinese agitations of 1878–81. He reintroduced the Chinese issue into parliament in 1878, when the ASN began its moves to replace European sailors with Chinese workers. Cameron also spoke at public meetings during the ASN strike in November and December 1878. When Parkes introduced his Chinese Immigration Restriction Bill in February 1879, Cameron was the first to speak after Parkes and Opposition leader Fitzpatrick. When an anti-Chinese agitation was renewed in 1880, Cameron took it up in parliament and was a prominent platform speaker in the public agitation of 1881. He made great play of his anti-Chinese reputation when seeking re-election in November 1880, pointing to the investigations of his 1876 select committee, and his continuing determination to stop Chinese immigration.77 But for all that, he seems never to have been associated with either of the two major grass-roots anti-Chinese movements – the TLC anti-Chinese committee or the Anti-Chinese League run by Sydney's middle-class protectionists. |
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Indeed, despite his role in the anti-assisted immigration campaign, labour movement bitterness towards Cameron continued. The scurrilous Pilgrim reports him being abused by the WMDA, some time in mid-1878.78 During the violent mine disputes in the Hunter Valley in 1879–80, the Agreements Validating Act was used to bring non-union labour into the mines from South Australia and Victoria. Thomas White, President of the Seamen's Union, hoped that this Act, which Cameron had championed, would be 'struck out of the statute book'.79 In an outburst after his defeat in West Sydney at the 1880 election, White declared, 'he would rather give a shake of the hand to an honest defeated candidate than to a dishonest candidate who might ride at the top of the poll,' a direct reference to the triumphant Cameron.80 |
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Conclusion | |
| The story of Angus Cameron, a talented unionist, elected to parliament, who abandons his class, is far from uncommon. It warns us that the actions of such parliamentarians are not necessarily driven by the desires of working-class voters or the demands of the organised labour movement. His story also suggests that the history of anti-Chinese campaigning in Australia may be far more complicated than the simple story of labour movement agitation (sometimes in league with middle-class elements) which dominates our histories. When Cameron set up his select committee, there was no visible working-class agitation against Chinese immigration, but there was a developing concern amongst some in the ruling-class over Chinese immigration into Queensland. At the same time, the assiduous research of the Sydney SCSSHB was threatening to put pressure on governments to regulate landlords in the interests of public health. There are strong reasons to believe that, having broken with his trade union base, Cameron used his select committee to reinvent himself as an anti-Chinese leader, supposedly protecting workers from unfair economic competition and moral danger, promoting an image of himself as a politician who cared about the very poorest in society who were forced to turn to filthy, overcrowded, common lodging houses for a bed. To important elements of the middle class and ruling class, he showed himself to be reliable in defence of their interests, committed to free trade and state funding of infrastructure for Sydney. Cameron also became a role model to workers who desired to see their class represented in parliament. His anti-Chinese politics did not reflect any organic link with the trade union movement which continued to feel bitter about his betrayal of their vision of a labour movement represented by its own people in parliament. |
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Phil Griffiths has taught political science at various universitiesin Sydney and Canberra, and is currently lecturing in Government at the University of Sydney. In 2007, he completed his doctoral thesis at ANU, The making of White Australia: Ruling class agendas, 1876–1888.
<philgriffiths@gmail.com>
Endnotes
* This article has been peer-reviewed for Labour History by two anonymous referees. The author would like to thank Frank Bongiorno, Sarah Gregson and Sigrid McCausland for their support and advice in preparing this article.
1. This is extensively discussed in Verity Burgmann, 'Writing racism out of history', Arena, no. 67, 1984, pp. 78–92.
2. New South Wales Legislative Assembly, Votes and Proceedings (hereafter NSW LA, V&P), 1875–76, vol. 6, pp. 845–68. It was graphic and sensational in its portrayal of Chinese men as seducers and destroyers of white women, aided by the addictive and demoralising effects of opium. While there was much other anti-Chinese literature that was equally appalling, few others were as destructive. Its status as a Select Committee Report gave it a credibility beyond that of mere newspaper articles or books. It became a reference point for the anti-Chinese argument in other colonies as well as NSW, and retained its status as a reliable exposure of the 'real' nature of Chinese men for well over a decade: see note 4 below. See also Ann Curthoys, Race and Ethnicity: A Study of the Response of British Colonists to Aborigines, Chinese and Non-British Europeans in New South Wales, 1856–1881, PhD thesis, Macquarie University, 1973, pp. 424–8. Within weeks of its presentation to parliament, NSW police began using vagrancy laws against young women to stop them entering Chinese houses; Evening News, 7 September 1876. However its main impact came later, and was significant in the Australasian Steam Navigation Company dispute of 1878.
3. Evening News, 8 August 1876, p. 2, col. 2.
4. Andrew Markus described the report has having left 'a deep impression on colonial thinking' in A. Markus, Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California 1850–1901, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney 1979, p. 78. The Select Committee Report was constantly referred to during the Seamen's strike of November 1878 - January 1879; see for instance reference to the report in the petition adopted by a public meeting at Balmain, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 1878, p. 6, col. 4; speech by John Riley in seconding motion at anti-Chinese public meeting at start of the strike, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 1878, p. 6, col. 1. For its continuing impact, see speech of Edmunds at the First Intercolonial Trade Union Congress, Sydney, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 1879, p. 6, col. 3. The speeches of Eames and Patterson, in same discussion, are also shaped by the Select Committee report, although less obviously. See election speech of Jacob Garrard, in Sydney Morning Herald, 6 November 1880, p. 3, col. 6. The report had a sustained impact on key ruling-class figures. It was used by John Lucas in the NSW Legislative Council debate on the Chinese Immigration Restriction Bill of 1881: 'Look at the revelations before the committee appointed on the motion of Mr. Cameron to inquire into the state of common lodging-houses. There you find evidence that they associate with them young girls of from 11 to 14 years of age, who are stupefied by inhaling opium, and are found lying together with a number of Chinese. Is that a desirable state of affairs to have here?' NSW Parliamentary Debates, vol. 5, 1881, p. 687. In Queensland, Cameron's report was used by leading conservative Albert Norton in the parliamentary debate on the Chinese Immigrants Regulation Act of 1877 Amendment Bill, to argue for stronger measures than those being proposed by the Liberals, Official Records of the Debates of the Legislative Assembly, vol. XLI, 1877, pp. 354–5; and by Postmaster General, James Garrick, introducing the bill into the Legislative Council, Queensland Parliamentary Debates, vol. XL, 1877, p. 125. Cameron's Select Committee report haunted the proceedings and report of the 1891–92 NSW Royal Commission on alleged Chinese gambling and immorality and charges of bribery against members of the police force, see 'Report...', NSW LA, V&P 1891–2, vol. 8, pp. 467–990; especially pp. 21–22 [of the report], and pp. 304–7, 329–30, 335–6 [of evidence]. This is by no means an exhaustive list.
5. Markus, Fear and Hatred, p. 78. Curthoys also links a working-class composition of an electorate to the involvement of the Member of Parliament in the anti-Chinese agitation of 1878, see Curthoys, Race and Ethnicity, p. 443.
6. Markus, Fear and Hatred, p. 78.
7. Bede Nairn, Civilising Capitalism: The Beginnings of the Australian Labor Party, Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Vic.), 1989 (first published 1973), p. 24. Nairn is referring to the result of the 1880 elections.
8. Charles A. Price, The Great White Walls are Built: Restrictive Immigration to North America and Australasia 1836–1888, The Australian Institute of International Affairs in association with the Australian National University, Canberra, 1974, pp. 153, 154, 167, 173.
9. Curthoys, Race and Ethnicity, p. 443. The other two were Ninian Melville, a prosperous undertaker and cabinetmaker, and Angus Cameron.
10. Bruce Mansfield, Australian Nationalism in the Growth of the Labour Movement in the Eighteen-Eighties in New South Wales, With Reference to Queensland, MA thesis, Sydney University, 1951, p. 3.
11. For example, Verity Burgmann, 'In Our Time' Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885–1905, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney etc, 1985.
12. Raymond Markey, The Making of the Labor Party in New South Wales 1880–1900, New South Wales University Press, Kensington, 1988, p. 11. The same tendency in Britain has also been criticised by Richard Price, An Imperial War and the British Working Class: Working-Class Attitudes and Reactions to the Boer War 1899–1902, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London & Toronto, 1972, p. 2.
13. Bede Nairn, Civilising Capitalism, pp. 11–20; Bede Nairn, 'Angus Cameron' in Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. III, pp. 335–6. Robin Gollan's account of Cameron, in R. Gollan, Radical and Working Class Politics: A Study of Eastern Australia, 1950–1910, Melbourne University Press, Parkville (Vic.), 1960, pp. 81–3, also misses the drama of his break with the Trades and Labour Council as well as the trade unionist hostility that developed towards him.
14. In Markus, Fear and Hatred, p. 78.
15. Trades and Labour Council (TLC) minutes, Mitchell Library, A3828.
16. Sydney Morning Herald, 2 December 1874, p. 1, col. 3; 4 December 1874, p. 1 col 6; 11 December 1874, p. 8, col. 2.
17. Frank Dixon nominating Cameron for West Sydney, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 December 1874, p. 5, col. 2.
18. See Cameron's major published election speeches, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 December 1874, p. 5, cols 5–6; p. 5, 7 December 1874, col. 3; 8 December 1874, p. 5, col. 1;15 December 1874, p. 6, cols. 1–2.
19. Cameron's £5 per week plus expenses came at a time when a labourer's wage was usually less than £2 a week and skilled tradesman's around £3.
20. Bede Nairn, 'Angus Cameron' in Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. III, pp. 335–6; C.N. Connolly, Biographical Register of the New South Wales Parliament 1856–1901, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1983, p. 44.
21. This was on 20 June 1875. Having been elected, Cameron was immediately replaced as delegate for the Carpenters & Joiners Society and resigned as secretary of the TLC.
22. TLC minutes, 8 April 1875. The minutes show that Cameron's behaviour was explained as being a product of his inexperience, an explanation which was accepted by the Boilermakers' delegate.
23. Evening News, 9 February 1876, p. 3, col. 3.
24. Sydney Morning Herald, 22 August 1879, p. 6, col. 2.
25. See comments by David Buchanan, Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), Evening News 28 January 1876, p. 3, col. 1.
26. TLC minutes, 17 February 1876.
27. At a special meeting of the TLC, 13 April 1876, see minutes.
28. Evening News 9 March 1876, p. 2, col. 2. Dibbs was a prominent shipowner, and elected for West Sydney as a supporter of the Public Schools League and Robertson's faction.
29. Stuart replaced William Forster on the latter's appointment as Agent-General for NSW in London.
30. Sydney Morning Herald, 10 December 1874, p. 6, col. 3.
31. For Cameron, see his speech in parliament, Evening News, 9 March 1876, p. 3, col. 1.
32. It was alleged that Phelps, the Member of Parliament with whom Cameron paired, may also have voted against the bill. See speech of Driver in Evening News, 22 March 1876, p. 3, col. 1. It was admitted by Cameron that Phelps had agreed to pair with W.C. Browne for six weeks; Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April 1876, p. 3, cols 1–3.
33. Evening News, 24 March 1876, p. 3, col. 1.
34. Evening News, 3 April 1876, p. 3, cols 1–3.
35. Burke famously argued that members of parliament should act on their own opinions, and not as delegates for the narrow interests of their electorate. This view of the role of parliamentarians had become hegemonic in this period. See Burke's 'Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll', 3 November 1774, in Warren M. Elofson (ed.), The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke: Vol. 3: Party, Parliament and the American War 1774–1780, Oxford University Press, 1981, pp. 63–70.
36. TLC minutes, 13 April 1876.
37. The general sanitary conditions of Sydney at the time are discussed in Shirley Fitzgerald, Rising Damp: Sydney 1870–90, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1987, pp. 69–100, and the circumstances of the Board's establishment on pp. 82–3.
38. Sydney City and Suburban Sewage and Health Board, 'Eleventh progress report of the board appointed on the 12th April, 1875, to inquire into and report upon the best means of disposing of the sewage of the City of Sydney and its suburbs, as well as of protecting the health of the inhabitants thereof', NSW LA, V&P, 1875–76, vol. 5, pp. 535–661. The committee that produced this report, the No. 11 committee, was appointed on 26 October 1875; the report was adopted by the committee on 7 August 1876, and by the Board on 10 August 1876, and published by the Legislative Assembly on 16 August 1876. Alan Mayne, Fever, Squalor and Vice: Sanitation and Social Policy in Victorian Sydney, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia (Qld), 1982, relies heavily on the Report of the No. 11 committee.
39. Of the 260 deaths in Sydney in the December quarter of 1875, 41.54 per cent were diseases classed 'zymotic'. 'This is attributable to the prevalence of diseases of a miasmatic character', the description generally given to what would later be understood as infectious diseases. Of the diseases characterised as 'local', which constituted 29.23 per cent of the death rate, many would have been the product of insanitary conditions and poor housing. The 125 deaths of males in December were balanced by just 126 births; for females the figures were 135 deaths to 146 births. For the whole year, there were 3,162 births and 2,673 deaths in the city. The infantile death rate in December was 49.23 per cent of aggregate mortality. Evening News 15 January 1876, p. 4, col. 6.
40. NSW LA, V&P, 1875–76, vol. 5, pp. 523ff.
41. Chapman was one of the few witnesses at the Select Committee; and it was his investigating team, of the two set up by the Sewage and Water Board committee, that produced all the evidence in that inquiry of Chinese men involved with European women supposedly under the influence of opium.
42. Report of the Select Committee, NSW LA, V&P, 1875–76, vol. 6, p. 847.
43. See, for example, report of the No. 11 committee in the Evening News, 17 August 1876, p. 2, col. 3: 'On the filthy condition of many of the Chinamen's quarters, and the infamous practices carried on in connection with the use of opium as a trap to draw victims into the vilest degradation, the report closely coincides with that of the Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly, recently noticed in these columns.'
44. For the deliberate neglect of sanitary conditions by governments, see Fitzgerald, Rising Damp, pp. 69–100, esp. pp. 84–88: 'In 1896 New South Wales became the last Australian colony to pass a general public health act, half a century after similar legislation had been passed in Britain', pp. 87–88.
45. Evening News, 8 August 1876, p. 2, col. 2. Chapman was an alderman of the City of Sydney and a member of the Sewage and Health Commission.
46. NSW LA, V&P, 1875–76, vol. 6, pp. 858–59.
47. Fitzgerald, Rising Damp, pp. 77–9, 82–3.
48. This debate, and the evidence, are in Sydney Morning Herald, 18 August 1876, p. 2, col. 8 and p. 3, cols 1–3.
49. Sydney Morning Herald, 18 August 1876, p. 3, col. 3; the debate on Cameron's adjournment motion runs from p. 2, col. 8 to p. 3, col. 3.
50. Sydney Morning Herald, 17 August 1876, p. 2, col. 2.
51. Sydney Morning Herald, 11 August 1876, p. 4, cols 4–5.
52. Sydney Morning Herald, 22 August 1876, p. 4, col. 5.
53. Fitzgerald, Rising Damp, p. 80.
54. For later references to Cameron's report, see note 4.
55. Evening News, 8 August 1876, p. 2, col. 2.
56. William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest, 2 vols, Chatto and Windus, London, 1876. White Conquest is a sprawling celebration of racial conflict, and anecdotes from the frontier, a celebration of white supremacy ending with a demand for racial unity against the threat from 'Red men, Black men, and Yellow men', p. 372. About a third of volume 2 is on Chinese immigration into California, and the 'threat' of Chinese industrial supremacy. It seems that White Conquest arrived in NSW during March or April 1876, as it was reviewed in The Stockwhip, vol. III, no. 8, 8 April 1876, p. 995. It was referred to by the Sydney Morning Herald when discussing the Chinese question in relation to the United States, eg. 10 November 1876, p. 4, col. 4; and used by platform speakers, eg. John Dixon, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 December 1878, p. 3, col. 4. It was sufficiently important for a group of Victorian Chinese merchants to challenge it in their pamphlet on the issue, L. Kong Meng, Cheok Hong Cheong, Louis Ah Mouy (eds), The Chinese Question in Australia, 1878–79, F.F. Bailliere, Melbourne, 1879, pp. 22–23.
57. Evening News, 9 March 1876, p. 3, col. 1.
58. The Stockwhip, vol. 3, no. 4, 11 March 1876, p. 922; emphasis in original.
59. At the public meeting called for him to explain his actions, reported in Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April 1876, p. 3, cols 1–3.
60. In NSW LA on 21 March; report in Evening News, 22 March 1876, p. 2, col. 6.
61. For a description of that section of the working class which relied on common lodging houses, see the speech by Rev. J. Jefferis, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 August 1880, p. 3; also Vagabond, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 February 1878.
62. Evening News, 22 March 1876, p. 3, col. 2.
63. I base this assertion on a systematic reading and analysis of the Evening News, for the months of March 1870, 1872, 1874, 1876 and 1878.
64. This conclusion is based on reading the Registers of letters received, Sydney City Archives, CRS 2, which recorded every letter received, the writer, and a short summary of the contents. Where possible, I checked ambiguously recorded letters, CRS 26, but a significant proportion of letters were not pasted in the letterbook volumes. There were, however, dozens of petitions each year from residents seeking to be connected to the water supply or sewerage, for kerbing, guttering, lamps, and the removal of rubbish and other nuisances. There were also petitions and letters from groups of labourers – not trade unions – seeking better conditions and pay. In the 1890s, when anti-Chinese racism had become hegemonic, residents did complain about Chinese people; see Janice L. Wood, Chinese Residency in the Haymarket and Surry Hills:1880 to 1902, BA (Hons), University of Sydney, 1994, p. 50; this reinforces the significance I attach to the lack of such complaints in the late 1870s.
65. Mitchell Library, A3828. The minutes of the TLC from October 1876 to 1880 are lost.
66. See, for instance, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 1877, p. 5, col. 5; Ibid., col. 3. The only mention of Chinese immigration that I could find in the election campaign was a question at a meeting for the marginal candidate for West Sydney, A.S. Hamilton, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October 1877, p. 3, cols 4–5. For the Political Reform League Manifesto, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 1878, p. 3, col. 7. Seamen's Union leader, Thomas White, was one of its vice-presidents, as was Walter Cooper, a former Sydney Morning Herald journalist who had written anti-Chinese exposé stories.
67. Markus, Fear and Hatred, p. 82; Sydney Morning Herald, 16 May 1878, p. 6, col. 1. The Political Reform Association was a separate organisation to the Political Reform League; they merged in August 1878 to become the Political Reform Union.
68. The petition presented by Cameron is at NSW LA, V&P, 1875–76, vol. 6, p. 869. In the week between the presentation of the select committee report, and the presentation of the petition to the Legislative Assembly (on 15 August 1876), the Sydney Morning Herald, carried no notices for public meetings on the Chinese issue, which it always did when a real, public agitation was in progress. The number of signatures is very modest for this kind of petition.
69. Sydney Morning Herald, 8 May 1876, p. 4, cols 5–6; 10 November 1876, p. 4, cols 3–4. In its editorial of 11 August 1876, the Sydney Morning Herald linked the concerns expressed in Cameron's report with the 'dangers' involved in the Chinese immigration into Queensland;
70. Sydney Morning Herald, 11 August 1876, p. 4, cols 4–5.
71. Sydney Morning Herald, 17 October 1877, p. 2, c7; Sydney Morning Herald, 19 October 1877, p. 5, col. 5.
72. Ann Curthoys, 'Racism and class in the nineteenth-century immigration debate' in Andrew Markus and M.C. Ricklefs (eds), Surrender Australia?: Essays in the Study and Uses of History: Geoffrey Blainey and Asian Immigration, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney etc, 1985, p. 97; Ray Markey, 'Populist politics' in Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus (eds), Who Are Our Enemies? Racism and the Working Class in Australia, Hale and Iremonger, Neutral Bay (NSW), 1978, esp. pp. 67, 71.
73. In 1874, both G.R. Dibbs and J.R. Sutherland, MLA, had donated to the TLC election campaign fund. See TLC minutes, 31 December 1874. This aroused some controversy at the TLC.
74. Mark Lyons, Aspects of sectarianism in New South Wales circa 1865 to 1880', PhD thesis, ANU, 1972, Appendix IId, p. 430. Chapman, and other supporters of Cameron such as Garrard were also members of Orange Lodges. This aspect of Cameron's political life is worthy of further investigation.
75. Sydney Morning Herald, 26 October 1877, p. 4, col. 8.
76. Sydney Morning Herald, 3 September 1879, p. 5, col. 1; Sydney Morning Herald, 22 October 1879, p. 4, col. 6.
77. Sydney Morning Herald, 11 November 1880, p. 3, col. 3; Sydney Morning Herald, 18 November 1880, p. 7 col. 2; see also Cameron's election advertisement, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 November 1880, p. 3, col. 6. Back in parliament, Cameron played no visible role in the great anti-Chinese agitation of 1887–88, but that may have been due to illness.
78. Another Pilgrim, no. 9, pp. 91, 92. The Pilgrim series were not dated; but this is clearly some time in 1878 before the Seamen's strike, probably late June. This is actually a split from the Working Men's Defence Association (WMDA) of 1877, headed by the long-standing radical activist, Martin Guest. The majority of the WMDA of 1877 had merged with some free selectors and others to form the Political Reform League.
79. Sydney Morning Herald, 22 August 1879, p. 6, col. 2. White later described himself as a 'poor shoemaker' and had come into the TLC as a representative of the Boot and Shoe Makers Union. At some point quite close to 1878, he took an official position with the Seamen's Union.
80. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 November 1880, p. 2, col. 5.
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