The 1912 Brisbane General Strike in Queensland, Australia, began when members of the Australian Tramway and Motor Omnibus Employees' Association were dismissed when they wore union badges to work on 18 January 1912. They then marched to Brisbane Trades Hall where a meeting was held, with a mass protest meeting of 10,000 people held that night in Market Square (also known as Albert Square, now King George Square).
The Brisbane Tramways were owned by the Brisbane Tramway Company, a mainly local owned company, linked with the former Metropolitan Tramway and Investment Company horse tramway company and the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company but operated it as an English Company as the main investors - in Melbourne and Brisbane as well as England and Scotland - owned tramways on all continents, however, there were a number of inter-related companies all with Brisbane Tramways in the title. [1] [2] [3] [4] The equipment for the tramway was supplied by the General Electric Company of the USA. Joseph Stillman Badger came out with the equipment to Brisbane in 1896 to install and set up the tramways. The Company asked him to stay on as General Manager, a proposal which he accepted, becoming managing director of the Company eventually. [5] [6] The men wanted the right to wear the union badge. Two organisers, reportedly IWW, went to all the tramways in Australia to try to organise a simultaneous strike over the issue. Badger refused to negotiate with the union over the issue. He also refused to go into negotiations with the Queensland Council of Unions Queensland peak union body, then known as the Australian Labour Federation. After this rebuff, a meeting of delegates from forty-three Brisbane based Trade Unions formed the Combined Unions Committee and appointed a General Strike Committee. The trade unionists of Brisbane went out on a general strike on 30 January 1912, not just for the right to wear a badge but for the basic right to join a union. The tramway men in Broken Hill were the only ones outside of Queensland to go out on strike over the issue. The other systems tramway men had little sympathy with the cause as it had already been listed for hearing before the Arbitration Tribunal.[ citation needed ]
Within a few days, the Strike Committee became an alternative government. No work could be done in Brisbane without a special permit from the Strike Committee. The committee organised 500 vigilance officers to keep order among strikers and set up its own Ambulance Brigade. Government departments and private employers needed the Strike Committee's permission to carry out any work. The Strike Committee issued strike coupons that were honoured by various firms. Red ribbons were generally worn as a mark of solidarity, not only by people but also on pet dogs and horses pulling carts. This spread even to school children where either blue or red ribbons were worn depending on one's side.[ citation needed ] Playground brawls were common. [7] Daily processions and public rallies were held to keep strikers occupied.[ citation needed ]
On the second day of the strike, over 25,000 workers marched from the Brisbane Trades Hall to Fortitude Valley and back with over 50,000 supporters watching from the sidelines. The procession was described as being led by Labor parliamentarians, with the procession being eight abreast and two miles (3 km) long, with a contingent of 600 women. The strike spread throughout Queensland with many regional centres organising processions through their towns. The strike committee regularly issued an official Strike Bulletin to counter the expected anti-union bias in mainstream newspapers.[ citation needed ]
William McCormack and the Amalgamated Workers' Association of North Queensland (AWA) initially lent their support to the strike. However, McCormack considered the pretext for the strike to be flimsy and AWA members soon returned to work. [8]
It was only when the strike spread to the railways that the Queensland government became concerned about the situation. At this juncture it banned processions, swore in special constables and issued bayonets to its police force. Commonwealth military officers and spare-time troops volunteered as special constables, and many of the specials wore their commonwealth uniforms into action.[ citation needed ]
An application by the strike committee for a permit for a march on 2 February 1912 was refused by Police Commissioner William Geoffrey Cahill. For the extreme violence police used against unionists and supporters on that day, it came to be called Black Friday.[ citation needed ]
Despite the refusal of a permit, a crowd estimated at 15,000 turned up in Market Square. Police and Specials attacked crowds in Albert Street under the direction of Cahill, who shouted, "Give it to them, lads! Into them." Meanwhile, Emma Miller, a pioneer trade unionist and suffragist, led a group of women and girls to parliament house. While returning along Queen Street, members of the group were batoned and arrested by a large contingent of foot and mounted police. Emma Miller, a frail woman in her 70s barely weighing 35 kilograms, stood her ground, pulled out her hat pin and stabbed the rump of the Police Commissioner's horse. The horse reared and threw off the Police Commissioner, who sustained an injury resulting in a limp for the rest of his life. There is some debate that Miller's hatpin stabbed Cahill in the leg. [9] [10]
The riding down and batoning of peaceful people, many of them being elderly and women and children on the footpath, was widely condemned, not only in union papers such as the Worker, but also in the more conservative papers such as Truth. It was initially called Baton Friday, but later came to be popularly known as Black Friday.[ citation needed ]
Conservative Queensland Premier Digby Denham viewed the strike committee as an opposing alternate administration and said there were "not going to be two governments" and opposed all further permits for processions. It was generally viewed as more of an insurrection than a strike by the conservative media and the Government, which is what the IWW organisers had really wanted Australia wide following their success with the 1908 Sydney tramway strike. When he attempted to enlist support of the Federal Government in the use of the military, he was rebuffed by the Labor Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher, member for the Queensland seat of Gympie. Fisher had also received a request for military support from the Combined strike committee, but declined this offer preferring to send a monetary donation in support of the strike.[ citation needed ]
Justice H.B. Higgins in the Federal Arbitration Court ruled that the precipitating event was a lockout rather than a strike, and that the regulation refusing tramwaymen the right to wear their union badges on duty was both unauthorised and unreasonable. Higgins could not intervene in restoration of jobs. [11]
When the Employers Federation agreed on 6 March 1912 that there would be no victimisation of strikers, the strike officially ended. [12]
The savagery of the baton charges by the Queensland Police Service and specials on Black Friday created a bitterness and hatred of the police which would last for several decades. The strike reinforced solidarity and collective identity of the Australian labour movement in Queensland. The Denham government immediately won an ensuing election on a "Law and Order" platform and passed the Industrial Peace Act of 1912 ushering in compulsory arbitration specifically to deter strikes in essential services.[ citation needed ]
Employees of the tramway company who had struck were sacked. The tramway company refused to ever re-hire these workers. When the tram system was acquired by the Queensland Government in 1922, the sacked workers were reinstated. Badges on uniforms – the cause of the strike – were forbidden even when the tram system (and later bus system) was under government and later Brisbane City Council control and were to remain forbidden until 1980.[ citation needed ]
In the aftermath of the strike three years later, there was an electoral swing to Labor all over Queensland, and the second Queensland Labor Government was elected in 1915, led by T. J. Ryan.[ citation needed ]
The play, Faces in the street : a story of Brisbane during the general strike of 1912 : a play in two acts written by Errol O'Neill was performed for the first time in 1983 by La Boite Theatre. [13]
Digby Frank Denham was a politician and businessman in Queensland, Australia. He was a Premier of Queensland and Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly. He was the first of only two Queensland Premiers to lose their own seat at a general election.
William McCormack was Premier of Queensland, Australia, from 1925 to 1929.
The Queensland Police Service (QPS) is the principal law enforcement agency responsible for policing the Australian state of Queensland. In 1990, the Queensland Police Force was officially renamed the Queensland Police Service and the old motto of "Firmness with Courtesy" was changed to "With Honour We Serve". The headquarters of the Queensland Police Service is located at 200 Roma Street, Brisbane.
The Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) is a representative, an advocacy group, or peak body, of Queensland trade union organisations, also known as a labour council, in the Queensland, Australia. As of 2020, 26 unions and 13 regional branches were affiliated with the QCU. The QCU represents unions covering around 350,000 Queensland workers. It is affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). Its offices are located in the suburb of South Brisbane, Queensland. As a peak body for the Queensland trade unions, the objective of the QCU is to achieve industrial, social and political justice for Queensland workers. The management structure of the QCU is made up of a committee of management and an executive of representatives comprised from affiliated unions.
Emma Miller was an English-born Australian pioneer trade union organiser, suffragist, and key figure in organisations which led to the founding of the Australian Labor Party in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
The history of Queensland encompasses both a long Aboriginal Australian presence as well as the more recent periods of European colonisation and as a state of Australia. Before being charted and claimed for the Kingdom of Great Britain by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770, the coast of north-eastern Australia was explored by Dutch and French navigators. Queensland separated from the Colony of New South Wales as a self-governing Crown colony in 1859. In 1901 it became one of the six founding states of Australia.
The Limerick Soviet was one of a number of self-declared Irish soviets that were formed around Ireland circa 1919. The Limerick Soviet existed for a two-week period from 14 to 27 April 1919. At the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, a general strike was organised by the Limerick Trades and Labour Council, as a protest against the British Army's declaration of a "Special Military Area" under the Defence of the Realm Act, which covered most of Limerick city and a part of the county. The soviet ran the city for the period, printed its own money and organised the supply of food. The Limerick Soviet was one of a number of Irish soviets declared between 1919 and 1923.
Carina is a suburb in the City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Carina had a population of 11,019 people.
The 1891 shearers' strike is one of Australia's earliest and most important industrial disputes.
The following lists events that happened during 1912 in Australia.
The 1948 Queensland railway strike was a strike which lasted nine weeks, from 3 February to 5 April 1948, over wages of workers at railway workshops and locomotive depots in Queensland, Australia.
The Brisbane tramway network served the city of Brisbane, Australia, between 1885 and 1969. It ran on standard gauge track. The electric system was originally energised to 500 volts, and subsequently increased to 600 volts. All tramcars built in Brisbane up to 1938 had an open design. This proved so popular, especially on hot summer nights, that the trams were used as fundraisers and often chartered right up until the last service by social groups.
Joseph Silver Collings was a long-serving Australian politician. He was a hardworking Australian Labor Party bureaucrat with valuable writing and speaking talents, who was eventually rewarded by a five-year stint as a federal government minister.
Walter Russell (Jack) Crampton was an Australian trade unionist, journalist and politician. He was a Member of the Queensland Legislative Council, until he voted to abolish the Council.
The Queensland Shearers Union was one of the first Australian unions, founded in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The union was instrumental in the development of the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, seen today as a key development in the Australian labour movement. Together with other unions the Queensland Shearers Union was the genesis of the Australian Workers' Union.
The Colony of Queensland was a colony of the British Empire from 1859 to 1901, when it became a State in the federal Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. At its greatest extent, the colony included the present-day State of Queensland, the Territory of Papua and the Coral Sea Islands Territory.
The Moreton Bay Tramroad Company was a private enterprise attempt to establish railways in the new colony of Queensland. It was stillborn.
William Geoffrey Cahill, was a soldier, officer and Queensland Police Commissioner in Queensland, Australia
The history of the Queensland Police Service in Queensland, Australia, commenced in 1864, five years after the Separation of Queensland from New South Wales in 1859. This timeline highlights significant developments in Queensland policing.
Endrim, Woodstock Road tram shed, and tram track are a heritage-listed group consisting of a house, a tramway and a tramway stop at 6 & 28 Woodstock Road, Toowong, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. They were built in 1906 by the Brisbane Tramways Company Limited. Endrim is also known as Arlington and "Boss" Badger's residence. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 23 March 2018.
