Labour and Politics (Essay‪)‬

In 1888, a hitherto unthinkable book appeared in the Australian colonies. Edited by the radical journalist John Norton, the first history of the antipodean labour movement was published as the grandiosely titled The History of Capital and Labour in All Lands and Ages. Norton's 943 page tome--featuring contributions from leading unionists such as former Melbourne Trades Hall secretary W.E. Murphy--was a new edition of an American work, prefaced with about 300 pages sketching developments in the antipodes. With one eye fixed firmly on the present, Norton's introductory stanza explicitly praised the 'high and honourable part which labour has taken in the formation of national character': Norton's heroic New World thesis wasn't particularly original. This radical nationalist story was being propagated by the likes of the Sydney Bulletin and the William Lane-edited the Brisbane Boomerang. Such publications were instrumental to the construction of a narrative whereby labour embodied Australia's innately democratic, egalitarian temper. As Lane editorialised in March 1889: