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Articles 1 - 15 of 15

Full-Text Articles in History

Denis Kevans: Poet, Rowan Cahill Aug 2015

Denis Kevans: Poet, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A brief account of the poetry of Australian social movement poet Denis Kevans (1939-2005).


Review: John S. Ahlquist And Margaret Levi, 'In The Interest Of Others: Organizations And Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), Rowan Cahill Apr 2015

Review: John S. Ahlquist And Margaret Levi, 'In The Interest Of Others: Organizations And Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of the comparative study of trade union organizational behaviour by John S. Ahlquist and Margaret Levi, 'In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), which involves a target group of US and Australian trade unions.


Mullen's Choices, Rowan Cahill Dec 2014

Mullen's Choices, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Obituary/biographical note concerning Geoff Mullen (1947-2014), and his anti-conscription activities (1967-1972) in Australia during the Vietnam War.


Book Review: David Grant, 'Jagged Seas: The New Zealand Seamen's Union, 1879-2003' (2012), Rowan Cahill Oct 2014

Book Review: David Grant, 'Jagged Seas: The New Zealand Seamen's Union, 1879-2003' (2012), Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of David Grant, 'Jagged Seas: The New Zealand Seamen's Union, 1879-2003' (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2012). The reviewer co-authored a history of the Australian Seamen's Union (1872-1972) in 1981, and this review is sympathetic towards Grant's history, and makes a case for the ongoing production of worker/union histories.


Home Front Ww2: Myths And Realties, Rowan Cahill Aug 2014

Home Front Ww2: Myths And Realties, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

This is a revised version of the author's 2014 Brisbane Labour History Association Alex McDonald lecture. In this paper the author takes apart the right-wing accounts, particularly by Hal Colebatch ('Australia's Secret War, 2013), that demonise the Australian trade union leadership and the Communist Party of Australia for 'treasonous' industrial disputation during World War II.


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 …


Behind The Rhetoric, Rowan Cahill Dec 2000

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.


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.


Another View Of The Sixties, Rowan Cahill Dec 1991

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.


A 'Potted History' Of The Seamen's Union Of Australia, 1872-1972: Articles From 'The Seamen's Journal', 1972, Rowan Cahill Dec 1971

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 …


Student Power, Rowan Cahill Aug 1968

Student Power, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Contemporary account by a participant-observer of the upsurge in 1968 of student activism on Australian university campuses, with particular emphasis on the concepts of 'student power' and 'democratisation'. The article is both a background piece, and a critique of the Australian university system and its operation at the time.


The Student Mood: Sydney University, Rowan Cahill, Terry Irving Dec 1967

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.


The Lost Ideal, Rowan Cahill, R Connell, B Freeman, T Irving, B Scribner Oct 1967

The Lost Ideal, Rowan Cahill, R Connell, B Freeman, T Irving, B Scribner

Rowan Cahill

Authored alphabetically by R. Cahill, R. Connell, B. Freeman, T. Irving, and B. Scribner, “The Lost Ideal” was published in the Sydney University student newspaper 'honi soit' on Tuesday, 3 October 1967. It was the foundation manifesto of what was to become known as the Free U, initially operating out of rented premises in Redfern (Sydney) before moving to premises in nearby suburbs. The first Free U courses commenced in December 1967, and early in the new year involved 150 people. At its peak, during the summer of 1968-1969, over 300 people were involved in courses. The Sydney experiment, which …