Page 8 - eMuse Vol.9 No.10_Neat

The 1891 Great

Shearers’ Strike

by Athony Hammill

The 1891 Great Shearers’ spread unemployment. A mari- Shearers’ Camp, Barcaldine 1891
Strike was a pivotal event in time black ban on wool shorn The strike spread to seamen, controlled more than 20% of the
Australian history, one which by non-unionists at Jondaryan wharf labourers and Newcas- Queensland pastoral industry.
impacts our way of life and Station on the Darling Downs in tle and Broken Hill miners, in-
standard of living today. It was 1890 was successful and spread volved 50 000 men, but failed
also a period in which Queens- to Sydney, but mounted police after three months.
land became a powder keg, to drove back unionists trying to A mass meeting of 60 000
the point where it is widely ac- block wool wagons reaching people in Melbourne prompted
knowledged that we came per- the docks. the Victorian government to in-
ilously close to civil war. The Maritime Strike of 1890 voke the Unlawful Assemblies
The 1880’s were a time in Melbourne was a result of Act and call out the military,
when workers began to realise the Steamship Owners’ Associa- and Colonel Tom Price threat-
the benefits of forming unions tion refusing to negotiate with ened deadly force.
and engaging in collective bar- the Marine Officers’ Association In Queensland, the Shearers’
gaining to further their goals until they disaffiliated with the Strike was precipitated by George
of achieving decent wages and Trades Hall Council. Fairbairn junior, whose company
working conditions.
The Queensland Shearers’
Union was established in 1887, George Fairbain Jnr
and the Queensland Labourers’ At his Logan Downs station
Union in 1888. One of their near Clermont on 5 January
goals was to unionise the work- 1891, his associates presented
place, as free or ‘scab’ labour the shearers with a non-ne-
undermined their efforts to gotiable contract organised
achieve wage justice. through the United Pastoralists
Employers, of course, saw Association.
unions as a threat to their pow- This was simply a union-
er and profits, and pushed for busting manoeuvre and made
‘freedom of contract’ whereby no pretence at being even ‘free
each man negotiated wages contract’. The unionists refused
and conditions with his em- to sign, and the strike was on.
ployer — in effect, the weak Space does not permit
bargaining with the strong. And lengthy details of the course
conservative, unrepresentative of the strike. Strike camps
colonial governments backed were established and a strike
the employers. committee formed at Barcal-
Matters came to a head dine (meetings were probably
Australia-wide in the 1890’s, never held under the so-called
a decade of drought, poverty, ‘Tree of Knowledge’). Fairbairn
bank crashes, strikes and wide- Col. Tom Price shipped in scab workers lured

8 eMuse October 2020