History Commons^™

"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

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

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

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

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 …

Curiosities Or Science In The National Museum Of Victoria: Procurement Networks And The Purpose Of A Museum, Gareth Knapman

Gareth Knapman

No abstract provided.

Adelaide And The Birth Of Anzac Day, Gareth Knapman

Gareth Knapman

No abstract provided.

Radio Narrative: Considerations On Form And Aesthetic, Siobhan Mchugh

Siobhan McHugh

No abstract provided.

Oral History And The Radio Documentary/Feature: Introducing The Cohrd (Crafted Oral History Radio Documentary), Siobhan Mchugh

Siobhan McHugh

No abstract provided.

Mapping An Ancestral Past: Discovering The Charles Richards’ Maps Of Aboriginal South-Eastern Australia, Gareth Knapman

Gareth Knapman

The Pacificator: Discovering The Lost Bust Of George Augustus Robinson, Gareth Knapman

Gareth Knapman

IN ONE OF THE BACKHANDED compliments for which Mark Twain was famous, he observed ‘in memory of the Greatest man Australasia ever developed or ever will develop, there is a stately monument to George Augustus Robinson, the Conciliator, in – no, it is to another man, I forget his name’.1 As a critic of imperialism and colonialism, Twain saw Robinson as a like-minded being who was on the right side of history. As far as Twain was concerned, this humanitarian hero and critic of colonial expansion was forgotten in the gilded age of 1890s high imperialism. In Twain’s time, stately …

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

Rowan Cahill

No abstract provided.

Exchanging Totems: Totemism In Baldwin Spencer's Overseas Exchanges, Gareth Knapman

Gareth Knapman

A Time For War: Correspondence, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A critical discussion of aspects of the Australian martial spirit in response to an essay on the subject by John Birmingham.

Sunshine And Shadows, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

This is a memoir of the author's childhood in Australia, during the Cold War, with the focus on the politics and culture of his environment, the city's suburban and conservative North Shore.

Introduction, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

In this introduction to a collection of recollections of thirty-nine participants in the turbulent period 1965-1975 in Australia, Cahill argues the period was a cultural revolution. The future was seeded with movements and ideas that changed Australian society and culture, and enlarged the space for democratic action.

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

Rowan Cahill

During the decade 1965-1975, a cultural revolution took place in Australia. The future was seeded with movements and ideas that changed Australian society and culture, and enlarged the space for democratic action. This book, edited by Beverley Symons and Rowan Cahill, themselves activists during the period, brings together the candid, at times vulnerable, recollections of thirty-nine participants in the events of the decade.

Len Fox, 1905-2004, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

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

Nest Of Traitors, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of Drew Cottle, 'The Brisbane Line - A Reappraisal' (Upfront Publishing, Leicestershire, 2003), a scholarly study of elements of the Australian ruling class during the 1930s and their close relationships with Japan, and the proposition that in the event of Australia being invaded by Japan during the Second World War, these elements would have collaborated.

Behind The Rhetoric, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A contemporary critical account of changes taking place in the NSW state education system in the late 1990s-2001 under the leadership of Dr. Ken Boston, Director-General of Education and Training in NSW. The author argues that Boston's 'devolution' rhetoric masks a determined conservative and Rightist push to politically and ideologically centralise the education system and in the process emasculate teacher initiative, imagination, and enterprise.

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.

Sea Change: An Essay In Maritime Labour History, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

An essay length monograph on the life and times of E.V. Elliott (1902-1984), a prominent and militant Australian maritime trade union leader from the 1930s through to the 1970s.

Synthesis And Hope, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A collection of the author's articles on school teaching and education, previously published in non-academic journals during the 1980s and early 1990s, and mainly drawing on the author's extensive classroom experience.

Another View Of The Sixties, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A contribution to ongoing discussion about the 1960s, in which author Cahill challenges the idea popular at the time of writing, that being a radical during the period was simply an adolescent/youth role one fashionably and easily slipped into.

Heroes And Villains, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review article discussion of the work of Australian Left journalists Wilfred Burchett, Rupert Lockwood, and John Pilger.

A 'Potted History' Of The Seamen's Union Of Australia, 1872-1972: Articles From 'The Seamen's Journal', 1972, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

This is a collection of brief articles covering the century of history of the militant Seamen's Union of Australia (SUA), 1872-1972. The articles were published over nine-months in the SUA journal 'The Seamen's Journal' as part of the union's commemoration of a century of organisation in 1972. The articles are of historiographical interest in that they were ahead of the time in some respects, discussing 'racism' in the union, and attempting to redress the historical neglect of the sea and maritime workers in Australian history, a neglect described and documented later by historian Frank Broeze in his acclaimed study 'Island …

The Student Mood: Sydney University, Rowan Cahill, Terry Irving

Rowan Cahill

A discussion published in 1968 by Cahill and Irving about student unrest in the universities of Australia, with specific reference to the situation existing at the time in Sydney University. At the time, Cahill was a prominent student radical completing his BA (Honours) degree and Irving was an activist-academic.