Thirty Years in Australia

by Ada Cambridge

The great shipping companies—I think the British India was the first—were ordered to refuse non-union wool as cargo. When they protested that they were mere public carriers for the world, and that such a local matter was no concern of theirs, the Wharf Labourers were called upon to refuse to load it or "come out" in a body. Bakers, butchers, and other trades were not to supply those vessels which touched the forbidden thing. When clerks and other non-professional persons took up the abandoned work, the usual picketing and persecution ensued—the conventional routine of strikes in all countries. The odds just here seemed hopelessly against the defenders, the sheer force of numbers overwhelming. The Seamen's Unions, with which the Marine Officers had cast in their lot, had cast in theirs with the Shearers and others, or, rather, their leaders had done so for them; and the crews came out, officers and all, at a few hours' notice, as they were "called" one after another, although the passengers might be on board and perishable cargoes doomed. "Wharves deserted" was a flaring headline in our morning papers, and the number of vessels named as compulsorily "laid up" rose daily. The campaign, from the unionist point of view, progressed without a hitch.

Until the gas-works went on strike. "All the men at the works come out," was announced to us one morning, and night brought an uncertain dimness to the streets and a realisation of what was happening—the plunging of our great city into darkness, while flooded with this dangerous element of mob rule.

This did seem a little too much, and the worm turned. There were meetings of the Cabinet, and a wholesale creation of special constables. It was announced by Authority that "order must be maintained at all hazards," and that it was resolved "to bring 100 members of the Mounted Rifles, with their horses, and 100 members of the Rangers from the country districts into Melbourne without delay." It was ordered that these troops "be kept on duty at the Military Barracks, St. Kilda Road, and not brought into the city unless occasion should demand it." But the Governor issued a proclamation which warned all concerned that a state of legal "riot" had arrived, which called for legal measures.

The strikers were nonplussed. First, they did not believe in it; then they felt furiously insulted; then they "went for" revenge headlong. That is to say, the strike leaders did so, not only because such was the natural course for them to take, as enemies of society who had had soldiers set at them, but because it would have been as much as their places were worth to admit that they had over-reached themselves. Powerful they must remain at any cost, or, as far as they were personally concerned, the game was up; and for the remainder of the fight, as we saw it, they used all that splendid loyalty and confidence which was, as it were, trust-money in their hands, to this one end. If the gas-works could not be taken by assault, they could by mining. The order went forth that "no more coal ships owned by the Victorian steamship owners be loaded." The ship-owners being to a large extent the coal-owners, the wide-reaching effects of this move can be imagined; every poor family felt them. With a stroke of the pen the Labour Congress in Sydney called out not only "all the miners from the Western mines," but "all shearers, rouseabouts, carriers and others in any way connected with the wool industry"—plain wool now, and never mind who took it from the sheeps' backs. This was the last card of those desperate gamblers—to destroy the wool industry bodily, £20,000,000 of the "living" of 4,000,000 people—and it finished the game they had already thrown away, so far, at anyrate, as Victoria was concerned. During the following year, 1891, there was a tough struggle in Queensland, where shearing began with the first month. The Amalgamated Shearers had hoped that Pastoralists (now amalgamated too) would "yet see their foolhardiness, and come to some satisfactory arrangement in favour of the portion of their new rules, which are obnoxious to the Shearers;" but the Pastoralists did not. Freedom! Freedom! was still their cry, and they had more strength to back it now. And when the disappointed ones took to riding about the immense colony in armed bands, firing grass and wool-sheds, turning (at anyrate, threatening to turn) out rabbits, and laying obstructions on the railway lines that carried non-union workmen, then troops and guns were sent to all the endangered places as far as they would go round, so that at last the defence was passed on to the Queensland Government itself, which had to end the duel. But it was in November 1890 that the Trades of our colony, in meeting assembled, were informed by their leaders that the strike was at an end, and they must make the best terms they could with the employers. And our soldiers had not to be sent anywhere. The moral effect of their known proximity and purpose, the disgrace of it, was enough to calm the disorder of the town. Strike leaders took care to give them a wide berth, and the men, who were not cowards, showed by their attitude of insulted dignity how this strong measure on the part of Government brought home to them the lengths to which they had gone. The captain of a mail steamer once sketched for me the comical picture of his big ship lying off a certain hostile shore, under the protection of a British gun-boat that he could have "put into his pocket"; so this handful of uniforms—militia at that—sufficed to check that mighty organisation of tens of thousands which so far had stuck at nothing. They did it by merely "keeping on duty at the Military Barracks," without showing a nose outside the barrack gates.

I do not know whether they were disappointed that no more was required of them, but I think they were, for it was their first chance of service in the field—as much as they would ever get, it appeared at the time. Certainly they responded with alacrity to the call for them, and "stood by" for action with the air of men enjoying themselves. Tents were pitched in the Barrack Square, and the little camp seethed with the excitement of its sudden importance. This feature of the great strike was one of much personal interest to me, because the barracks were a haunt of mine at this period. A beloved friend, now in her grave, was there, the wife of the colonel who created the Mounted Rifles, who commanded the Second Victorian Contingent in South Africa, a fine soldier of a race of soldiers, and now a C.B. in Imperial recognition of the fact. Since the breaking-up of my town home at Toorak, on the death of its head, whose daughter she was, her official quarters had been its substitute; and many indeed are the happy memories that flood back upon my mind when now I ride past the massive granite pile without stopping as I used to do. As a family residence it was not considered a success. The Barrack Square, seemingly walled off, was not walled off enough for officers' little boys; the tall rectangular rooms were gloomy, the stone stairs cold and prison-like, the back-yard a mere well in the masonry—although the colonel kept his shooting dogs there, and tried to keep a cow; the basement a haunt of rats that ate our boots and shoes while they were down to be cleaned, and one of those public stenches that Melbourne still keeps amongst her institutions (though this particular one has been eliminated) so close under the windows that it was necessary to shut them when the wind blew a certain way. But it was an interesting place to visit at, apart from the friendship that has hallowed it to me. The bugle of a morning sent thrills through my waking senses, with its associations of the past. The stately bustle of military business, trampings and clankings, and the omnipotent word of command—the pleasant officers dropping in so often, the reviews, the tattoos—all had their charm for me, because then I knew only the picturesque features of soldiering, the romantic side, which I think now it will never wear again for anybody.

And there never was a more interesting time at the barracks than that which saw these country troops massed on the parade ground, waiting to be summoned to so new and strange a duty. Their colonel was a man notorious for plain speaking as for plain acting; the straight word and the swift blow (if necessary) were his, and a perfect scorn of consequences. In military affairs especially there was no mincing matters. Business was strictly business. So he told the men, who might at any time be called out to suppress civilian rioters, what they were to do in the terms that they were accustomed to. An orderly patience was to be maintained up to that point where the line had to be drawn; if that were passed, then, said he, simply, "Fire low and lay 'em out."

To "fire low" was, I believe, enjoined under the given circumstances by the regulations, and to "lay 'em out' is a colonial expression covering a wide field. His men understood him perfectly, and nobody within barrack walls had an idea of the potential sensationalism of his words. But somebody repeated them outside; the exasperated unionists got hold of them and found a plausible grievance in them, and they seem to have been immortalised by the tremendous rumpus that ensued. Here were poor innocent working men, and here was this bloodthirsty swash-buckler inciting their own brothers to slay them. Was the country going to allow such an outrage to pass? Not if they knew it. The colonel had to stand a sort of military trial for his offence before the avengers could be appeased. It came to nothing, but gave him as a scapegoat to the revilings of those with whom soldiers had become so unpopular. They hissed him in public places. They soothed the soreness of their other reverses by trying to make his life a burden to him. But it only hurt him through his wife, whose bright, good life it saddened deeply for a time. "Fire-low" or "Lay 'em out" took the place of his Christian name in the public mouth, and they keep it still, only that now the bitter nicknames have come to sound almost like terms of endearment.

For when the South African struggle came to widen our outlook in so many directions, there was such a unanimous call for him all over the country that it cannot be supposed that his one-time enemies did not join in it. He was not chosen to lead the First Contingent, and the crowds through which it passed from us loudly voiced their sympathy with him in the untoward circumstance. I saw him go with the Second, and the cheers that followed him from the barracks to the ship were heart-stirring to listen to. It was thought that he was riding his own charger, which was safe on board, and his borrowed mount was almost denuded of its mane and tail by the enthusiasts who wanted a hair as a memento of him; he was nearly dragged from the saddle by the press of parting hand-shakers. It was the same when he came back, only more so. Every returned soldier was mobbed by his friends, but the frenzied "There he is!" and "That's him!" when the big colonel turned a corner into view, and the resultant roar of welcome, proclaimed the popular as well as the peculiar hero.

The military intervention in the struggle of the strike appeared decisive, but to deeper causes must be ascribed the modifications in the situation that remained after the dust of combat was cleared away. Labour Unions in this country were taught to "play the game" as soldiers would never have taught them. It was the civilians who manfully refused to knuckle under, who risked all for honour and the public good, to whom, more than to any other cause whatever, we owe a dozen years of industrial peace. And if that same wholesome spirit of true patriotism would arise again to put down a form of tyranny that has become quite as oppressive and ruinous as the Unionism of old....

But we shall see that too, some day.