The Australian Society for the Study of Labour History
By Peter Love Our long-time comrade and radical activist John Ellis has died at home with Dianne by his side. It’s said that you’re not dead ‘til you’re forgotten. If so, it’ll take a long time for John to go. We remember his memoirs of a busy life as a PKIU workplace activist in Flinders... Continue Reading →
Ken Mansell Jon (Darce) Cassidy was probably not meant to become one of the foremost left-wing agitators of his generation. Jon’s upbringing was privileged. His father Ralph Cassidy, tragically killed on RAAF service in 1942, was a barrister from a poor Irish background tinged with ‘Orange’ sectarianism. His mother Audrey Cassidy scrimped and saved to... Continue Reading →
Book Review by Janet McCalman Sally McManus, On Fairness (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2019). 9780522874853 (pbk) 9780522874860 (ebook) 100 pp. This is a little book not only of big ideas but of immense passion and relevance. It could not be more timely, as the world staggers under the burden of ever-increasing unfairness and inequality, a burden... Continue Reading →
Applications are open for the Rae and George Hammer Memorial Visiting Research Fellowship. The fellowship is to support students from universities outside of Brisbane who are undertaking an Honours, Masters or PhD program to access the primary collections held in The University of Queensland’s Fryer Library. Up to $2,500 is available to support accommodation and... Continue Reading →
South of the border, Queensland may be better known for the reactionary Joh Bjelke-Petersen regime of the 1970s and 1980s, and more recently as the centre of Pauline Hanson’s racist One Nation Party. Yet in the 1930s and 1940s, the ‘Red North’ — the area north from Mackay to Cairns — developed as the single... Continue Reading →
By Rowan Cahill* A review of Michael Quinlan, The Origins of Worker Mobilisation: Australia 1788-1850 (Routledge: NY and Oxon, 2018). In the tradition of E. P. Thompson, redolent of the work of Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, Michael Quinlan’s The Origins of Worker Mobilisation: Australia 1788-1850 is magisterial and exhaustive. ‘Magisterial’ because it is... Continue Reading →
Serenading Adela: A Street Opera 7 January 2018, World Premiere and Centenary Performance: WHEN: From 6pm, Sunday 7 January 2018. WHERE: Pentridge courtyard (Entrance through the Champ Street Coburg archway). Meet our Unruly Mob at 6pm and march with them to Pentridge, where the Street Opera will commence at 6.30pm. WHAT: The World Premiere of our full Street Opera. FLYER: Serenading Poster for Pentridge TICKETS? Entry is free, but please book so we can send you details of the march, of wet-weather options; and have enough chairs. Click here to book! IF BOOKED OUT Please register for the waiting list, so you will be notified if spaces become free, or be offered standing room (1 hour show).
Terry Irving We’ve just come back, Sue and I, from four weeks in France and Spain, a very different holiday from our usual. Without a car, we walked a lot, in small towns and suburbs away from the main tourist attractions. And we discovered something tourism is not designed to reveal: traces of the collapse... Continue Reading →
Frank Bongiorno* The eminent historian, Hugh Anderson, died on 3 March 2017 at the age of 90. He leaves us with an enduring legacy, a prodigious body of work, and his collection of materials which led to the creation of the Radical Collection at Victoria University. A public celebration of his life was held at University House, University of... Continue Reading →
We respectfully acknowledge the First Nations of Victoria, and their Elders past, present, and emerging. We also acknowledge the Traditional Owners of lands across Australia, their Elders, Ancestors, cultures and heritage.
