Industrial Labour and Politics: The Dynamics of the Labour Movement in Eastern Australia 1900-1921

Abstract

Industrial Labour and Politics is a new examination of some of the crucial questions of Australian labour politics - the relation of the industrial and political wings of the labour movement, the conflicts between Labor politicians and the extra-parliamentary organizations, and the part played by left-wing minorities in the movement. This study is centred on the movement's formative years, the first two decades of this century, when the first Labor governments were formed and such 'settled policies' as the reliance on arbitration, the 'socialist objective', and control of the parliamentary parties by the party conferences, were first established. As well as providing an extensive analysis of the Australian labour movement in these years, this book tells in detail, for the first time, some of the most remarkable episodes in the history of the movement - the general strike of 1917, the imprisonment of twelve Industrial Workers of the World for arson and conspiracy, the origins of the Communist party, the Labor split over conscription. The book is thus concerned more with the internal politics of the movement than with its place in Australian life and society as a whole.

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