The Tottenham Rebels : radical labour politics in a small mining town during the Great War

Abstract

This thesis looks at an Australia after the defeated strikes of the 1890s but before the defeated great strike of 1917, where contrary to the standard view workers had not contented themselves with parliamentary politics and reform. The setting is the raw mining and agricultural centre of Tottenham in western New South Wales. It focusses on the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), seeking to explain the appeal of the movement in the area, and what drove some of its members to take up arms against the police-resulting in the deaths of a police officer and two members of the Tottenham IWW Local. The thesis offers for the first time a deep analysis of the IWW in an Australian rural setting, at the same time arguing that a previous focus on urban Australia, especially Sydney, has been unwarranted and misleading. The thesis documents the lives and struggles of a 'rebel family' of working class agitators, whose roots were in Tottenham but who carried their revolutionary flag across Australasia and North America. It examines how the state and employers responded to the activities of the IWW in Tottenham, and to what extent the IWW used sabotage as a tactic in their class struggle. The hastily carried out executions of two 'Wobblies' provoked a storm of debate, not least surrounding the unprecedented execution of a crown witness. The response to the murder and the executions accentuated the split within the labour movement; the actions of the Tottenham IWW infiltrated the national debate over conscription and the crackdown on the IWW throughout the country. The events and individuals at Tottenham influenced the fate of the IWW in Australia and beyond. Reflecting on these events, together with a consideration of non-urban work and culture, makes the Australian 'Wobbly' more explicable.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	English