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Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Political History

Review Of David Horner,'The Spy Catchers: The Official History Of Asio, 1949-1963', Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014, Rowan Cahill Jul 2015

Review Of David Horner,'The Spy Catchers: The Official History Of Asio, 1949-1963', Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Critical review of the officially commissioned history of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) published in 2014.


A Living Tradition, Rowan Cahill Jul 2015

A Living Tradition, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Discussion of the seminal work by R. W. Connell and T. H. Irving 'Class Structure in Australian History' (Longman Cheshire, 1980, 1992), and of the tradition of Marxist and class analysis in Australian intellectual life.


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.


Revisiting A Struggle: Port Kembla, 1938, Rowan Cahill Mar 2015

Revisiting A Struggle: Port Kembla, 1938, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A review and discussion of the 2015 documentary film 'Pig Iron Bob' (Producer/Director Sandra Pires). The focus of this film is the dramatic 2-month long boycott by Australian waterside workers in Port Kembla (NSW), 1938/39, of a cargo of Australian pig-iron bound for Japan. The workers took their action in protest against Japanese militarism and the Sino-Japanese War. The boycott enraged the conservative Australian government of the day which pulled out all stops to maintain its policy of appeasement towards Japan.


Radical History And Labour History, Terry Irving, Rowan Cahill Feb 2015

Radical History And Labour History, Terry Irving, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

This piece by Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill was published on their 'Radical Sydney/Radical History' blog (19 February 2015). It welcomes the Radical History Conference (London, 24 March 2015) and reflects on how the political heritage of labour, the original impulse for 'labour history', is energising a new generation of radical historians.


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.


"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 …


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.


Nest Of Traitors, Rowan Cahill Jul 2003

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.


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.


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.


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.