Chartism and the Eureka Rebellion

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There were key people involved in the Eureka Rebellion who subscribed to the ideals of Chartism and saw the struggle on the Victorian goldfields as a continuation of the activism in Britain in the 1840s and "the centuries of heroic struggles in England which preceded the Australian Federation" [1] such as the 1688 Glorious Revolution, that resulted in the enactment of the English Bill of Rights. [2] From 1837 to 1848, 129,607 incomers to Australia arrived from the British mainland, with at least 80 "physical force" chartists sentenced to penal servitude in Van Diemens Land. Currey agrees that the population at the time would have been sufficiently politically awake such that: "it may be fairly assumed that the aims of the Anti-Corn-Law League and the Chartists were very familiar to many of the Victorian miners". [3]

Contents

The Ballarat Reform League's charter was heavily influenced by the one adopted at the 1839 Chartist National Convention held in London. [4]

Gregory Blake has conceded that the so-called "Eureka Jack" may well have been flown beneath the Eureka Flag according to the first reports of the battle, [5] as the miners were claiming to be defending their British rights. [6]

Ballarat Reform League charter

After five hours of debate, it was formally resolved on 11 November 1854 at a meeting attended by a crowd of 10,000 at Bakery Hill in Ballarat that the Ballarat Reform League be formed to aggregate and articulate the interests of the mining community and "on that day it became an organization supported by the whole of the mining community in Ballarat". [7] [8] It was reported by the Ballarat Times that at the appointed hour, the "Union Jack and the American ensign were hoisted as signals for the people to assemble". [9]

The League's manifesto was dismissed by Raffaello Carboni as "worn out twaddle imported from old England". [10] It calls for abolishing the goldfields commission and the mining and storekeepers tax. In terms of electoral reforms, it demands full and fair representation, universal white male suffrage, abolition of property qualifications for members of the Victorian Legislative Council, payment of parliamentarians, and regular elections. The League also aimed to "unlock the lands", which referred to the issue of individual free and leasehold over crown land. [11]

The founding secretary, John Basson Humffray, who led the walkout by members of the "moral force" faction immediately before the Battle of the Eureka Stockade, was a Chartist and other several other Ballarat Reform League leaders, including George Black, Henry Holyoake, and Tom Kennedy, are also believed to have been Chartists. [12]

Eureka Jack as a Chartist liberty symbol

Gregory Blake, in his 2012 Eureka Stockade: A Ferocious and Bloody Battle advances the theory that the Union Jack mentioned as flying over the Eureka Stockade during the battle by the first newspaper reports was flown as the result of the miners' claiming to be defending their British rights. [13] According to pioneering vexillologist Dr Whitney Smith, the Union Jack became a true national flag in the UK while being "inscribed with slogans as a protest flag of the Chartist movement in the nineteenth century". [14]

Impact on the Eureka Rebellion

With regards to Chartism and the Eureka Rebellion, Geoffrey Serle has concluded that:

By no stretch of the definition can Eureka be labelled a chartist-style outbreak; yet in the diggers’ movement as a whole the claim for political rights became stronger with each successive crisis ... Although few were 'politically conscious', most took it for granted that they had natural rights or rights as Britons to political privileges ... Eureka was also important in that it provided the occasion and the issues on which the latent popular democratic movement could build itself. [15]

See also

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References

  1. ↑ Michael Kirby (13 August 1996). The Blessings of the Constitution (Speech). Constitutional Centenary Foundation, South Australian chapter. University of Adelaide.
  2. ↑ An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown. England. 1689.
  3. ↑ Currey 1954, p. 8.
  4. ↑ Weiss 2000, p. 34.
  5. ↑ "By Express. Fatal Collision at Ballaarat". The Argus . Melbourne. 4 December 1854. p. 5. Retrieved 12 July 2023– via Trove.
  6. ↑ Blake 2012, p. note 78.
  7. ↑ Vern 1855, p. 10.
  8. ↑ Gollan 1967, p. 28.
  9. ↑ Ballarat Times, 18 November 1854 as cited in Wickham, Gervasoni and D’Angri, 13, 20.
  10. ↑ Carboni 1855, p. 41.
  11. ↑ Ballarat Reform League Charter, 11 November 1854, VPRS 4066/P Unit 1, November no. 69, VA 466 Governor (including Lieutenant Governor 1851-1855 and Governor's Office), Public Record Office Victoria 1854/11/11.
  12. ↑ Corfield, Wickham & Gervasoni 2004, p. 112.
  13. ↑ Blake 2012, pp. 243–244, note 78.
  14. ↑ Smith 1975, p. 188.
  15. ↑ Serle 1963, pp. 183–184.

Bibliography

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