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Rowan Cahill

Selected Works

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Articles 31 - 60 of 75

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Would 'The Making Of The English Working Class' Get Made Today?, Rowan Cahill Aug 2014

Would 'The Making Of The English Working Class' Get Made Today?, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

It is fifty years since leftist publisher Victor Gollancz published The Making of the English Working Class by English historian Edward Palmer Thompson (1924–1993). During 2013, this event has been, and is being, commemorated globally in political and scholarly conferences and journals. My dilapidated copy is the Penguin revised edition (1968), purchased in 1970. Still in print, and with more than a million copies sold worldwide, Thompson’s hugely influential doorstop book is regarded as a pivotal exploration of social history, as much an historical classic as it is a literary classic. The book runs to some 900 pages and over …


The Eight Hour Day And The Holy Spirit, Rowan Cahill Aug 2014

The Eight Hour Day And The Holy Spirit, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

In Australia during the 1850s skilled workers in Sydney and Melbourne generally worked a 58 hour week; 10 hours per day Monday to Friday with 8 hours on Saturday. For other workers it was longer; shop assistants, for example, worked between 12-14 hours per day. Child labour was not uncommon; in 1876 in New South Wales, for example, the NSW Coal Mines Act was passed to limit the working week for boys aged 13-18 years to 50.5 hours per week and ban the employment of girls or boys in mines under the age of 13. The idea that working people …


Len Fox 1905-2004, Rowan Cahill Aug 2014

Len Fox 1905-2004, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The Eureka flag draped over the coffin of Len Fox was there because Len had spent much of his life, some 60 years and three books, authenticating a flag in the Ballarat Art Gallery as the flag that flew over the stockade of the Eureka rebels in 1854, the symbol, in the words of historian Bob Walshe who spoke at his funeral service, "that most dramatically captures the spirit of Australian struggle for an independent democratic republic".


Introduction - A Turbulent Decade: Social Protest Movement And The Labour Movement, 1965-1975, Rowan Cahill Aug 2014

Introduction - A Turbulent Decade: Social Protest Movement And The Labour Movement, 1965-1975, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The Conference, 'Social Protest Movements and the Labour Movement, 1965-1975', was held in Sydney on September 22-23, 2001. It took place eleven days after Muslim militants crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Centre in New York and into the Pentagon, and nine days after the Australian government, in consultation with the United States government, invoked relevant provisions of the ANZUS treaty equating an attack on the US as an attack on Australia's peace and safety. Australia was heading for military involvement in a war against the hapless, impoverished nation of Mghanistan - a war that US President George W. …


On The Technique Of Working-Class Journalism, Rowan Cahill Aug 2014

On The Technique Of Working-Class Journalism, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

No abstract provided.


The Making Of A Communist Journalist: Rupert Lockwook, 1908-1940, Rowan Cahill Aug 2014

The Making Of A Communist Journalist: Rupert Lockwook, 1908-1940, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The journalist/publicist Rupert Lockwood (1908-1997) was one of Australia’s best known Cold War communists, his name synonymous with the Royal Commission into Espionage in Australia, 1954-1955, as author of the notorious Document J. However the communist journalist did not spring fully formed into history. He joined the Australian Communist Party in 1939. This article traces Lockwood’s development as a journalist and his evolution as a communist between the wars. It is a story that ranges from small-town Western Victoria, and the West Wimmera Mail, to Melbourne and Sir Keith Murdoch’s Herald. In between, much of the world is traversed--significantly, South …


A Conscription Story, 1965-69, Rowan Cahill Aug 2014

A Conscription Story, 1965-69, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Conscription (National Service) was re-introduced to Australia in November 1964, and ended in 1972. Conscripts were randomly selected by a lottery system for 20-year-old males. While it was not publicly known at the time, I in 12 eligible males were actually selected, though this ratio varied according to the number eligible each year and the actual number required by the army; so, for example, in October 1972 the chances of being selected were I in 20.1 Whilst historians tend to refer to conscripts as “men”, it should be remembered that in Australia during the 1960s neither the right to vote …


Obituary: Kondelea (Della) Elliott (1917-2011), Rowan Cahill Aug 2014

Obituary: Kondelea (Della) Elliott (1917-2011), Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

In 1902 Lenin published the political tract which became a basic text for left-wing activists titled 'What is to be Done?'. Della Elliott tended not to ask that question; rather she saw what had to be done, and got in and did it. In the process, her doing was careful, meticulous, and professional; all the metaphorical'i's were dotted, and the 't's crossed. Moving away from metaphors to actualities, spelling had to be correct, and meanings clear.


Home Front Ww2: Myths And Realities, Rowan Cahill May 2014

Home Front Ww2: Myths And Realities, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Beginning with recent attempts by conservative interests to depict some Australian trade unions as having acted in 'traitorous' ways during World War 2 by engaging in activities that variously sabotaged the home front war effort, this lecture examines the claims, and the myth of the social solidarity of Australian society 1939-45.


The Radical History Of Sydney University: Student Activism In The 60s, Rowan Cahill Mar 2014

The Radical History Of Sydney University: Student Activism In The 60s, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A personal account of radical activism at Sydney University during the 1960s by two activist/participants, Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving. The talk was part of the campaign by Sydney University students to mobilise for the National Rally for Education Rights held on 26 March 2014.


Ohs In China - Work In Progress, Diana J. Kelly, Rowan Cahill Nov 2012

Ohs In China - Work In Progress, Diana J. Kelly, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

This paper explores the barriers and challenges to effective implementation of occupational health and safety regulation (OHS), and occupational exposure limits (OELs) in China in order to identify the lessons for social science scholars and activists. It finds that formal labour legislation, including occupational health and safety legislation is relatively extensive, but rarely effectively realised. This has partly been because of the pace of political and economic transformation in China. As a result, the soft infrastructure of skills and knowledge necessary for an active, effective and genuinely protective OHS system are inchoate, and often, as OHS awareness has grown, firms‟ …


"Never Neutral": On Labour History / Radical History, Rowan Cahill Apr 2012

"Never Neutral": On Labour History / Radical History, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Eric Fry, one of the founders of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History (ASSLH), wrote about radical history in the ‘Introduction’ to his neglected Rebels & Radicals (1983). The book is not listed in Greg Patmore’s comprehensive listing of labour history publications (1991), rates no mention in the 1992 tribute to Fry’s work edited by Jim Hagan and Andrew Wells, and receives only brief mentions in the Labour History tribute issue to Eric Fry and fellow ASSLH pioneer Bob Gollan (2008). Arguably with good reason, since the book was exploring a different way of writing dissident history, …


Review - Michael Tubbs, Asio: The Enemy Within, Rowan Cahill Apr 2012

Review - Michael Tubbs, Asio: The Enemy Within, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

ASIO: The Enemy Within is a combative book. Based on his research and experience, Michael Tubbs argues that the Australian Intelligence Security Organisation (ASIO) has no place in Australia’s democracy. According to Tubbs ASIO has, since its formation in 1949, acted as a partisan political secret police force, ridden roughshod over civil liberties, engaged in illegal activities, all with the aim of creating and managing a docile, tranquil public.


Review: People And Politics In Regional New South Wales, Rowan Cahill Apr 2012

Review: People And Politics In Regional New South Wales, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Histories of Australian towns and local areas abound, usually the work of enthusiastic local residents distributed through community based museum and historical society networks. Aimed at local audiences, these histories tend to be triumphalist, cataloguing ‘progress’ in terms of population changes and infrastructure growth. There is little in the way of explanation or analysis; local identities appear as a ‘cast of characters’ rather than as flesh and blood historical agents; politics is noticeably absent. For one state, the two volume People & Politics in Regional New South Wales, 1856 to 2006, addresses this political absence. Given the huge size of …


Review - Pete Thomas, And Greg Mallory (Editor), The Coalminers Of Queensland: A Narrative History Of The Queensland Colliery Employees Union, Volume 2: The Pete Thomas Essays, Rowan Cahill Apr 2012

Review - Pete Thomas, And Greg Mallory (Editor), The Coalminers Of Queensland: A Narrative History Of The Queensland Colliery Employees Union, Volume 2: The Pete Thomas Essays, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

In 1986 journalist Pete Thomas published the first volume of his proposed two-volume narrative history of the Queensland Colliery Employees Union, The Coalminers of Queensland. But he died before completing the task. With the support of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), Mining and Energy Division (Queensland District Branch), labour historian Greg Mallory has edited Volume 2 from Pete’s unpublished manuscripts.


On Winning The 40 Hour Week, Rowan Cahill Apr 2012

On Winning The 40 Hour Week, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The 40-hour week was approved by the Commonwealth Arbitration Court on 8 September 1947, to take effect from 1 January 1948. The 40-hour campaign, the 35-hour campaign that followed in the late 1950s, the 44-hour campaign that preceded these, and union attempts between all three to fix the working week at either 30 or 33 hours, were parts of a long movement for the codification and reduction of Australian working hours that began in the mid 1850s with struggles by workers to establish the principle of the 8-hour day. Stonemasons in Sydney and Melbourne gained the first successes during 1855 …


The 1978 Military Occupation Of Bowral, Damian Cahill, Rowan Cahill Apr 2012

The 1978 Military Occupation Of Bowral, Damian Cahill, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Early during the morning of Monday, 13 February 1978, a city council garbage truck stopped in Sydney’s George Street, outside the Hilton Hotel, to collect the weekend contents of an overflowing litter bin. Two council workers began to empty the bin, and as they did, a bomb hidden in it exploded, killing them both. A nearby policeman later died in hospital from injuries received, and seven other people were seriously injured. Inside the Hilton Hotel were eleven visiting heads of government—the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting (CHOGRM) was due to start in Sydney later that day. On Tuesday 14 …


Security Intelligence And Left Intellectuals: Australia, 1970, Rowan Cahill Apr 2012

Security Intelligence And Left Intellectuals: Australia, 1970, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

In 1970 the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) identified the ideas of Antonio Gramsci as one of the root causes of dissent, opposition and cultural ferment. This document is an example of ASIO’s concern about Marxist intellectuals and their Gramscian links.


Ohs In China-Work In Progress, Rowan Cahill, Di Kelly Feb 2010

Ohs In China-Work In Progress, Rowan Cahill, Di Kelly

Rowan Cahill

This article explores the barriers and challenges to effective implementation of occupational health and safety regulation (OHS), and occupational exposure limits (OELs) in China in order to identify the lessons for social science scholars and activists. It finds that formal labour legislation, including occupational health and safety legislation is relatively extensive, but rarely effectively realised. This has partly been because of the pace of political and economic transformation in China. As a result, the soft infrastructure of skills and knowledge necessary for an active, effective and genuinely protective OHS system are inchoate, and often, as OHS awareness has grown, firms' …


Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits And Unruly Episodes, Terence H. Irving, Rowan Cahill Dec 2009

Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits And Unruly Episodes, Terence H. Irving, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

No abstract provided.


Immigrant Tales, Rowan Cahill Jan 2009

Immigrant Tales, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of two autobiographical accounts of migrant encounters with, and experiences in, Australia: Ken Buckley, 'Buckley's! Ken Buckley: historian, author and civil libertarian' (2008) and Mamdouh Habib, 'My Story: the tale of a terrorist who wasn't' (2009).


'On The Technique Of Working-Class Journalism', Rowan Cahill Jan 2008

'On The Technique Of Working-Class Journalism', Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

This article examines some of the views of prominent Australian left journalist Rupert Lockwood (1908-1997) on the role and nature of working class journalism.


Introduction, Rowan Cahill Jan 2008

Introduction, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

This collection of poems by Ernest Antony (1894-1960) was first published in 1930, and since then has been largely forgotten, except for the title poem, 'The Hungry Mile', which has become iconic, but generally attributed to 'Anonymous'. This edition was published by the Maritime Union of Australia, and Cahill's 'Introduction' is the first detailed account of the poet's work and life.


Len Fox, 1905-2004, Rowan Cahill Feb 2004

Len Fox, 1905-2004, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Obituary on the life of Australian author, journalist, historian, and Left activist Len Fox.


Flags Of Convenience: Shipping Industry Patriotism, Rowan Cahill Jan 2004

Flags Of Convenience: Shipping Industry Patriotism, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

An account of the growth of 'flag of convenience' shipping during the twentieth century, with critical attention to the dynamics that drive the industry.


The Battle Of Sydney, Rowan Cahill Jan 2002

The Battle Of Sydney, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Account of the wartime strike by Australian troops in Sydney, 1916, in defence of their working conditions. This action involved thousands of soldiers, mutiny, and a march through the streets of Sydney culminating in violence and bloodshed. The strike tends to be either absent from, or misrepresented in, Australian martial histories.


Summerhill Showdown, Rowan Cahill Jan 2000

Summerhill Showdown, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Discussion of the attempt by the British government in 2000 to close down Summerhill school, the long established progressive school founded by A.S. Neill (1883-1973). The article discusses the ideas and legacy of Neill, and why his approach to education is still radical.


Maritime Internationalism, Rowan Cahill May 1999

Maritime Internationalism, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

An account of the long records of internationalism of the Seamen's Union of Australia (SUA) and the Waterside Workers' Federation (WWF), and the way these records contributed to vital international support for the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) during the bitter Australian 'War on the Waterfront' (1998). The MUA was formed in 1993 following the amalgamation of the SUA and the WWF.


Vietnam Reading, Rowan Cahill Jan 1998

Vietnam Reading, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

During Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, the author was prominent in the anti-war movement, and a conscientious objector to the system of compulsory military service in place at the time. In this article he accounts for the intellectual development which shaped his politics. The focus of the article is the reading he did during the 1960s.


Military Madness, Rowan Cahill Dec 1997

Military Madness, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A brief historical overview of the use of military, and ex-military, personnel, against Australian trade unionists, 1890-1997.