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Articles 1 - 19 of 19

Full-Text Articles in History

On The Margins, Rowan Cahill Aug 2019

On The Margins, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

An overview of the work of Australian activist/historian Iain McIntyre, and a review of his anthology On the Fly! Hobo Literature and Songs, 1879-1941 (PM Press, 2018)


Review Of Port Kembla: A Memoir (2019) - A Local History That Captures The Diversity Of Australia, Rowan Cahill Apr 2019

Review Of Port Kembla: A Memoir (2019) - A Local History That Captures The Diversity Of Australia, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of the book by Pam Menzies, 'Port Kembla: A Memoir', an account of the history of the industrial town of Port Kembla on the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia. In the process of reviewing the book, Cahill ruminates on the nature of 'local history' as a cultural industry in Australia, and as a democratic activity. 


The Far Left In Australia, Rowan Cahill Oct 2018

The Far Left In Australia, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of The Far Left in Australia Since 1945, edited by Jon Piccini, Evan Smith and Matthew Worley (Routledge, 2019).


Vintage Red.Docx, Rowan Cahill Sep 2017

Vintage Red.Docx, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review article based on the author's reading of the autobiographical novel by Stephen Moline, Red (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2017). The novel is discussed in the context of the historiography of the Communist Party of Australia.


End Of Paragraph, Rowan Cahill Aug 2017

End Of Paragraph, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A tribute to the life and work of US journalist, author, soldier, script writer, leftist activist, Clancy Sigal (1926-2017), with particular reference to his novel/memoir Going Away (1962).


The Barber Who Read History And Was Overwhelmed, Rowan Cahill Jul 2016

The Barber Who Read History And Was Overwhelmed, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Beginning with a chance encounter in a Barber's shop whilst travelling, the author ruminates on history, and the proposition that each and everyone of us is an historian, and that in a sense we are all time travellers. Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is invoked, and the role of radical historians from below discussed before the author returns to his Barber shop encounter, and to Brecht. The title of the piece references Brecht's poem A Worker Reads History (1936).


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.


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.


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.


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 …


Introduction, Rowan Cahill Dec 2004

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.


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.


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 …


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.