Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Shelf Of Reds, Rowan Cahill Dr, Terry Irving

Terry Irving

Radical History: Thinking, Writing And Engagement, Terry Irving, Rowan Cahill

Terry Irving

The Lost Ideal, Rowan Cahill, R Connell, Brian Freeman, Terry Irving, Bob Scribner

Terry Irving

Now a document of historical interest and significance, this is the foundation manifesto of the Free University, Sydney. Conducted in rented premises in Redfern and nearby inner-Sydney suburbs, this utopian education experiment ran from December 1967 until it closed in 1972. At its height, during the Summer of 1968-1969, some 300 people were involved.

Blog: Radical Sydney/Radical History, Rowan Cahill, Terry Irving

Terry Irving

This blog was initiated in 2010 in association with the publication of the book "Radical Sydney" (UNSW Press: 2010) co-authoured by Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving. Since then it has morphed to focus on the authors' ongoing thoughts on the theory and practice of 'radical history'. The blog also has related essays by historian Humphrey McQueen, and disability activist Joan Hume.

'A Song For The Future': A Response To Paul Pickering, Terence Irving

Terry Irving

I am grateful to the Editor of Labour History for arranging this symposium on my book, and to Paul A. Pickering for considering it so provocatively. Back in 1996 this journal published Paul’s timely recovery of the egalitarian, socialist principles inspiring the poetry of the young H.R. Nicholls, who was then a hero of the businessmen of the New Right in Australia. Nicholls was an English Chartist who migrated in 1853 to Victoria, taking his principles with him; in Pickering’s words ‘his locality changed, but not his mentality’, a statement that neatly sums up the idea that has inspired much …

Shaping Histories, Terence H. Irving, Rowan Cahill

Terry Irving

During the last few years, a number of researchers have interviewed the authors regarding their politics and practice in relation to 'history'. In reflecting upon their individual 'historiographies', they have put the following together. The authors met at Sydney University in the 1960s; Irving was a post-graduate student and a tutor; Cahill was an undergraduate student. They were two of the five founders of the Sydney Free University (1967-1972).

Labour Intellectuals In Australia: Modes, Traditions, Generations, Transformations, Terence H. Irving, Sean Scalmer

Terry Irving

The article begins with a discussion of labour intellectuals as knowledge producers in labour institutions, and of the labour public in which this distinctive kind of intellectual emerges, drawing on our previously published work. Next we construct a typology of three ‘‘modes’’ of the labour intellectual that were proclaimed and remade from the 1890s (the ‘‘movement’’ the ‘‘representational’’, and the ‘‘revolutionary’’), and identify the broad historical processes (certification, polarization, and contraction) of the labour public. In a case study comparing the 1890s and 1920s we demonstrate how successive generations of labour intellectuals combined elements of these ideal types in different …

Places, Protests And Memorabilia: The Labour Heritage Register Of New South Wales, Terence Irving, Lucy Taksa

Terry Irving

No abstract provided.

‘The Triumph Of Green Hearts Over Sere’: Reflections On Student Radicalism At Sydney University In The 1910s And The 1960s’, Terence H. Irving

Terry Irving

At the end of the paper I sketch an argument for considering these two periods together, but I want to begin on a personal note. For some time I’ve been writing about left intellectuals in the early twentieth century, one of whom is Gordon Childe, and in the course of researching his undergraduate years at Sydney University between 1911 and 1913 I made a couple of interesting discoveries about student radicalism. I discovered the existence of a University Socialist Society in 1910 and 1911, a fact that nullified Alan Barcan’s claim in his book, Radical Students, that political clubs did …

Was There An Alternative To Liberal Representative Government In 1856?, Terence Irving

Terry Irving

No abstract provided.

How Labour Governs: Lessons For Today, Terence H. Irving

Terry Irving

The 2007 conflict between the NSW Labor Ministry and the party’s extra-parliamentary organisation is not new. Vere Gordon Childe described the first such clashes, and the reasons they are endemic, in How Labour Governs, his 1923 book about workers’ representation. According to Childe, there is something at the core of being ‘labour’, something in the fundamental process of organising to represent a wage-earners’ interest, that produces a fatal flaw in the labour movement, so that it ends up not knowing how to use its power in government, and failing as an organ of workers’ representation.

Radical History - Interview On Hindsight - Citizen In The Republic Of The Arts: Lucien Henry, Terence Irving

Terry Irving

No abstract provided.

Shaping Histories, Terry Irving, Rowan Cahill

Terry Irving

An account by Irving and Cahill of their developments as historians in Australia during the Cold War. This article was written in response to questions by researchers about the authors' political/historical developments and involvements, particularly as New Left historians.

Radical Sydney - Places, Portraits And Unruly Episodes, Terry Irving, Rowan Cahill

Terry Irving

Sydney is represented to its citizens and to the rest of the world as a postcard, an impressive, beautiful city, a desirable tourist destination.

But there has always been another Sydney not viewed so fondly by the city’s rulers, a radical Sydney they are intent on ‘disappearing’ beneath concrete and glass. In the arc of working-class suburbs to the south and west, menace and disaffection developed. From the early nineteenth century through to the late twentieth century these suburbs were large and explosive places of marginalised ideas, bohemian neighbourhoods, dissident politics and contentious action.

Through a series of snapshots of …

The Southern Tree Of Liberty: The Democratic Movement In New South Wales Before 1856, Terence Irving

Terry Irving

Who would imagine that democracy in NSW was won through fierce political battles and street rallies? The Southern Tree of Liberty sheds light on this turbulent and violent period in Australian history. For twenty years, the advocates of democracy mobilised the working class and fought hard to bring popular rule to the colony. The elites, on the other hand, used their legislative powers to halt this march towards liberty, most notably in the Constitution of 1853.

‘Labour History And Its Political Role – A New Landscape’, Terence H. Irving

Terry Irving

As I was thinking about what to say today I read an article on Manning Clark and found something that made me pause. It was a description of our venerable journal, Labour History, but characterizing it in terms that none of us would use, at least not in public. Instead of describing our field, our sources or our methods, our long list of illustrious contributors, it said that Labour History was the journal of Australia’s left-wing historians. Well, this was in Wikipedia – but nonetheless it struck me that, yes, this is a truth I am prepared to accept. I’m …

Rediscovering Radical History, Terence Irving

Terry Irving

No abstract provided.

'Pickering Un-Picked', Terry Irving

Terry Irving

This is the second installment of my debate with Paul Pickering about 'Chartism and something more' in the context of colonial Australia. I criticize the 'British world' focus of Pickering's work because it underplays the material forces and practices that reveal the situation-specific meaning of political ideas. See also: ‘ “A Song for the Future”: A Response to Paul Pickering’, Labour History, number 92, May 2007, pp 143-8 (by invitation) http://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/326/.

"Labour History And Its Political Role - A New Landscape, Terry Irving

Terry Irving

This address to a centenary issue forum for the Australian journal, "Labour History", focused on the political role of the journal in academic circles. It discussed the politics involved in the journal's foundation and the political implications of the redefinition of its field by Van der Linden, especially his use of the distinction between labour as toil and creative work. It is also a distinction made by recent 'autonomist' theorists. The article concludes by recommending that the journal should drop its present subtitle; that labour historians should pay more attention to the theoretical discussions of (working) class, multitude and subalternity; …

A Childe Bibliography: A Hand-List Of The Works Of Vere Gordon Childe, Terry Irving, Peter Gathercole

Terry Irving

A hand-list devoted to the published writings of Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957). It includes political writings, letters to newspapers, and reviews, as well as his books, articles and contributions to books. It covers his Australian years as well his academic career in Britain. Because its aim is to create an historical record of both Childe's work and the continual contemporary interest in his ideas, the list is arranged year by year to highlight his productivity and the periods when attention to his work was greatest. There are four sections: (i) books and monographs; (ii) articles and chapters; (iii) reviews; and …

Esmonde Higgins In The Soviet Union, Terry Irving

Terry Irving

Esmonde Higgins visited the Soviet Union in 1920 and became a Communist, and in 1928 and began a process of disengagement from Communism. This chapter explores his reactions to the Soviet Union during those visits, in particular how he projected onto the Soviet system his own imagined world of socialist feelings. Back in Australia it was the bureaucratic and ruthless style of the party's leadership that cured him of his sentimentality about Communism and the Soviet system.

The Southern Tree Of Liberty - The Democratic Movement In New South Wales Before 1856, Terry Irving

Terry Irving

Responsible government began in New South Wales after two decades of radical democratic agitation. Radical intellectuals from England, Ireland, Scotland and Europe mobilized the working men and women of the colony to resist the aristocratic form of government proposed by pastoralists and city capitalists. There was violence on the streets and goldfields, and some notable electoral victories. As 'a great fear' gripped the local elites the British government forced them to accept a more liberal form of representative government in the belief that this would placate the democrats and keep the colony safe for British imperial needs.

Labour Intellectuals In Australia: Modes, Traditions, Generations, Transformations, Terry Irving, Sean Scalmer

Terry Irving

The article begins with a discussion of labour intellectuals as knowledge producers in labour institutions, and of the labour public in which this distinctive kind of intellectual emerges. Next we construct a typology of the three modes of labour intellectual that were proclaimed and remade from the 1890s (the 'movement', the 'representational', and the 'revolutionary'), and identify the broad historical processes (certification, polarization, and contraction) of the labour public.

Places, Protests And Memorabilia - The Labour Heritage Register Of New South Wales, Terry Irving, Lucy Taksa

Terry Irving

A guide to collections and sites of labour heritage in New South Wales. It contains three data bases: (i) labour memorabilia; (ii) sites of working class leisure, housing and work; (iii) labour precincts in Sydney, its suburbs and the main towns of NSW. The precincts database was constructed through a systematic search of documentary sources between 1890 and 1980 so that it can reveal the changing contours of the precinct over time.

The Growth Of Federal Authority, 1929-40, Terry Irving

Terry Irving

This chapter covers the period of economic crisis in which Labor returns to government at the national level, splits and loses office, and rebuilds its strength in a long process of asserting the authority of the Federal Parliamentary Party against the state branches and the factions they often spawned. It begins with Scullin's victory and ends with the new leader, Curtin, poised to make Labor the party of government in another moment of national crisis.

The Public Sphere And Party Change: Explaining The Modernization Of The Australian Labor Party In The 1960s, Terry Irving, Sean Scalmer

Terry Irving

This article argues that the modernization of the Australian Labor Party was not inevitable or necessary. The party did not modernize because it was overly dominated by trade unions, because society had changed, or because class was no longer central. Instead the transformation of the party was the result of a series of political struggles, in which the modernizers grasped new resources in the changing public sphere - the dynamic new media of post-war Australia.

Labour Historians As Labour Intellectuals: Generations And Crises, Terry Irving, Sean Scalmer

Terry Irving

Over the last nine decades Australian labour historians have been engaged in a massive, ongoing, fractious, collective intellectual project. This chapter argues that labour historians should understand their role historically, as labour intellectuals, and sketches three generational moments in the history of labour history intellectuals. We conclude that labour history is a popular, collective, democratic, regional, and political form of history-writing.

Esmonde Higgins - Politics As Intellectual Practice, Terry Irving

Terry Irving

This chapter traces Esmonde Higgins' struggle to define his intellectual practice from 1919 to 1954, using his private correspondence and his published writings. It divides his reflections into three parts: alienation, practice, and contradictory aspects of practice.It describes his route from Communist bureaucratic practice to having conversations 'about human interests' with workers as equals in adult education classes and informal domestic gatherings.

Childe And Australia - Archaeology, Politics And Ideas, Terry Irving, Peter Gathercole, Gregory Melleuish

Terry Irving

This book focuses particularly on Gordon Childe's Australian background and connections, while also linking his European and Australian experiences and various aspects of his work in prehistory, archaeology, history and politics. Included too are Childe's own letters and reminiscences of those who knew him, some published for the first time.

Youth In Australia - Policy, Administration And Politics, Terry Irving, David Maunders, Geoff Sherington

Terry Irving

This book describes and analyses the development of youth policy in Australia since the end of World War II. Three eras are distinguished in terms of how society constructed youth as a problem: as juvenile delinquency (to 1960); as a generation gap (to the mid-1970s); and most recently as a wasted resource (1975-1990). In each period chapters cover: the social and demographic context and images of young people; policy development; bureaucratic structures; and the politics of youth and youth policy.