Patriotism and Its Discontents: a Small Town in a Great Strike I

Patriotism and its discontents: a small town in a great strike i

Julie Kimber

Lecturer in Politics Social & Policy Studies Faculty of Life and Social Sciences Swinburne University of Technology

Mail H31 PO Box 218 Hawthorn VIC 3122 Australia Email: [email protected] Tel: + 61 3 9214 8103 Fax: + 61 3 9819 0574

1 Patriotism and its discontents: a small town in a great strike

Julie Kimber*

Much ink has been spilt on the question of the General Strike of 1917. Despite nuances of interpretation there exists a general consensus that the strike was a product of the deeply disruptive social, economic and political circumstances of World War I. This paper seeks to add to that discussion through a vignette of the strike, as it played out in the town of Orange in central western NSW. The battle for the meaning of words unleashed during the period illustrates the now well- known fault lines of power and social control embedded in Australia.

The 1917 Strike cannot be studied in isolation from World War I. As Dan Coward argued the reaction to the strike ‘reflected a corrosive social and political malaise’ then prevalent (Coward, 1973, p. 80). Despite differing nuances, a historiographical consensus exists on the particularly brutal effects of the processes of the war (see, for example, Gollan, 1963; Turner, 1965; Coward, 1973; Taksa, 1991; and Bollard, 2006). The conscription referenda campaigns, punctuated by the General Strike, lifted the veil of consensus, created new social fractures and entrenched divisions between political parties. It purged these parties of marginal supporters, removing the cross-class nature of organisations in infancy. Such schisms are evident in the competing hegemonic discourses. Those on opposing sides employed the same rhetoric: scabs, shirkers, slackers, loafers, loyalists and traitors. Mateship was evoked time and again to cajole, set straight, belittle and triumph. Behind the invective lay the inexplicable tragedy of World War I (Inglis, 2001, p. 97). The physical violence abroad was met by the ‘symbolic’ violence of language at home: the latter shows up the fallacy of the shared ‘consensus’ of the young nation, revealing instead the structural inequalities extant within society. The strike corroded the very thing that expressed a common culture: language.

The 1917 General Strike was one of the most dramatic events in New South Wales labour history. Its development is now well known: coming just weeks after protests against the Government for halting public works projects, the General Strike was a response to the introduction of a time card system in the New South Wales Railway workshops. The strike spread to other unions and parts of Australia, and soon involved almost one hundred thousand workers (see for example Taksa, 1991; Patmore, 1985; Turner, 1965). Its immediate causes are also familiar. As Taksa (1991, p. 16) commented, ‘despite previous assurances that conditions of labour would not be altered during the war’, the New South Wales government introduced a time card system on the railways, and the fear of the ‘speed-up’ precipitated wild cat strikes that culminated in the official walk-off on 2 August 1917. The government’s intransigence and refusal to send the dispute to arbitration undermined what Taksa described as the ‘tradition of meliorism’; as such the government had ‘evaded’ the ‘traditional compact between workers and the state’ (Taksa, 1991, pp., 22-24). This paper attempts, through the lens of experiences in the town of Orange, to show that the ‘compact’ alluded to by Taksa was illusory; representing instead, a coerced acquiescence to a supposed Governmental paternalism, which was, in any case, shattered by the process of war. Such acquiescence was premised on largely unquestioned but competing interpretations of language. It is when these interpretations are employed for completely opposite objectives that the fallacy of shared consensus is revealed.

Orange, historically maligned in favour if its near neighbour, Bathurst, lies west of that centre on the rich volcanic soil of Mount Canobolis. A strong agricultural hub, the town has also been the centre of a vibrant manufacturing industry and of a small, though substantial and diverse local industry. The railway cemented its longevity and ensured for much of the first half of the twentieth century its connection with the rest of the state. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the cleavages within the railways would affect this town and the trajectory of the strike would echo the experience elsewhere. This paper attempts to show how the gentle social fabric of Orange was woven on a tenuous shared use of language, and how, during the strike, a competition for the control of language occurred within the town.

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In 1917, the large regional railway junction in Orange employed up to 60 wages staff, overseeing some 115,000 passenger journeys a year. The wages staff, familiar with the troubles before the strike, held a mass meeting after the appeal to stop work was issued by the Amalgamated Railway and Tramway Service Association (ARTSA). They agreed, ‘with one or two exceptions’, to quit. (Orange Leader, 1 August 1917; 3 August 1917; 6 August 1917; Report of the Commissioners, for year ending June 30, 1917, p. 60). As with the experiences of others, their decision to strike was not made lightly. It was made in spite of appeals to loyalty in wartime and promises that such loyalty would be rewarded. The decision precipitated an immediate walk-off, shortly before the mail train was about to arrive from Forbes. Railway management sent out an appeal to ‘clerical staff to fill the breach’.

Men, who were ordinarily poring over ledgers or compiling returns, were for the nonce transformed into porters, ticket collectors, and anything else required of them. They wheeled the heavily laden luggage trucks up and down the platform, showed passengers to their seats with an amiability altogether foreign to the passenger, and successfully conducted the whole of the arrangements as if they had been accustomed to it as part of their daily avocation (Orange Leader, 8 August 1917).

This quote comes from the local newspaper, The Orange Leader, which, due to a combination of both a paucity of sources and the textual analysis it enables, is used extensively in this paper. Local newspapers in towns like Orange acted as a medium of the public sphere and as such reveal much of the tensions and hegemonic structures of power in localities (see, for example, Hurd, 2000; Mayer, 1968; Kirkpatrick, 2000; Aitkin, 1985; Habermas, 1992). The war coloured the language employed by the newspaper, which borrowed heavily from military allegories and an urgency hardly fitting the (local) situation at hand. Important also was the use of sarcasm and humour, both of which were employed by strikers and ‘loyalists’ alike during the dispute. The use of language formed the central strategy in the battle for moral ascendancy irrespective of the reality it portrayed.

Despite the ‘glowing report’ of the amiable, courteous and able strikebreaker, the strike severely curtailed the running of trains through Orange and created large frustrations. Those

3 trains that did manage to get through were so heavily laden with passengers that many had to stand for the entire journey to Sydney. The ‘loyalists’ (mainly salaried office staff) busied themselves with the work of porters, platform hands and cleaners. Even the ‘call boy’ had gone on strike, his job filled by the superintendent’s clerk. As occurred elsewhere, railway officers and the government were successful in positioning the strike in relation to the war effort and the strikers’ loyalty to King, Empire and Nation was put on notice. The Leader played its role in maintaining such division and for the most part backed the loyalists during the strike by publishing telegrams in support of the government sent by ‘the public of Orange’. In one, the ‘public’ ‘expressed deep admiration’ to the Superintendent of Lines for his attempt to ‘overcome the difficulty of transport’; the same message also congratulated ‘loyalists who have remained true to their employers, and the country’ (Orange Leader, 8 August 1917). A second telegraph from ‘loyalists’ in Orange was sent to Deputy Commissioner E. Milne. It read: ‘accept heartiest congratulations stand taken by Commissioners in this regrettable strike. Hope your action will be strongly supported by the Government. Western friends are with you.’ (Orange Leader, 8 August 1917). The publication of the telegraph, while not immediately evident in this quote, fits with the long- standing appeal to the rationality and superiority of localism against class identity, which permeated local politics.

Such appeals were made within the context of straitened circumstance. For Orange an immediate effect of the strike was a shortage of food. Several grocers arranged to have teamsters drive to Sydney, a return journey that could take over two weeks. Within days of the strike in Orange, rationing of sugar and butter commenced. While the Leader credited the Orange strikers for being ‘very orderly’, it maintained that they ‘would go back at once, but for the fear of being called scabs and blacklegs’. The strike reproduced the language of the conscription struggle before it. Lines were drawn between loyalists and traitors. The term ‘scab’ was invoked by both sides. With the slaughter of Passchendaele now evident, the strikers struggled for legitimacy. The Leader chastised the strikers by asking: ‘what greater sin could be perpetrated than that of scabbing it on their mates in the trenches’ (Orange Leader, 8 August 1917; see also 13 August 13, 1917).

A ‘largely signed requisition to the Mayor’ appeared in the Leader calling for a town meeting ‘for the purpose of obtaining an expression of opinion from the citizens with regard to the present railway strike’ (Orange Leader, 8 August 1917). At the meeting, attended by four hundred people, the town’s Mayor, E.T. McNeilly, asserted that ‘they should all be loyal to the government’. A resolution to that effect was moved and carried ‘by a large majority’. It declared ‘its determination to assist the Government in every possible way to deal effectively with the present railway and tramway strike’, and pledged its commitment ‘to stand by the Government and Railway Commissioners in any action taken’ (Orange Leader, 10 August 1917). Other supporters included the newly formed Orange Chamber of Commerce, Railways Officers (Orange Leader, 10 August 1917) and one or two wages staff.

When the Leader asked one of the wages staff why he was staying on the job, he reportedly responded

What! Leave my old boss to worry this thing out himself; not me mister. I’m here till the nails are worn off my fingers working for him. He’s got nothing to do with

4 the card system, or the men coming out, so it’s up to me to stick to him, and by God mister, there ain’t one of them strikers that’ll convince me and my mates that we are not doing the right thing according to our ways of thinking. No; Mr Donnellan. Though he only stands five feet in his sox, ‘ll do me. He’s white, and we chaps who are working are going to treat him white (Orange Leader, 13 August 1917).

That the man wished to treat his boss ‘white’ illuminates the contradictory role of men and ideas deemed ‘foreign’. The linking of treating a man ‘white’ to Imperial patriotism sits uncomfortably alongside the declaring ‘black’ of those same patriotic loyalists. When Bollard referred to seemingly similar inconsistencies in language among the 1917 strikers – in his example between xenophobia and class consciousness, in the above example, between xenophobia and Empire loyalty – he noted that ‘the shift from an emphasis on loyalty to nation to loyalty to class is exposed – particular and contradictory as all shifts must be’ (Bollard 2006, p. 88). Such shifts in language highlight the confused alignment of words between competing political communities. Another inconsistency can be seen in one of the supporters of the Commissioners: the Orange Railway Ambulance Rifle Club, whose patron E.B. Dalton, was a prominent Catholic businessman and staunch supporter of the demand for Irish Home Rule, a cause that had (and would) raise its own questions of loyalty (Orange Leader, 17 August 1917; 27 August 1917).

Arguably one way to see the strike of the railwaymen in Orange is through the development of this group as a political community; a process in which we see these men becoming part of the emerging working class, using the language and tactics of class. Something akin to what Hobsbawm has described as ‘a growing sense of a single working class, bound together in a community of fate irrespective of is internal differences’ (Hobsbawm 1998, p. 69). One such tactic employed across the state, and used in Orange, was the declaring ‘black’ those hotels which housed Railway Officers (See Orange Leader, 31 August 1917; 7 September 1917). This and other methods proved effective in the early days of the strike, and the railway station, as the Leader pointed out, was ‘about as lively as a cemetery’. The strikers organised themselves and also visited the homes of loyalists, one of whom was Sam Coker, ‘a charge man in the loco yards’, who had remained loyal. He was also the secretary of the Orange Railway Institute, which had been opened only a year before amidst enormous fan-fare by Deputy Commissioner Milne (Evening News, 8 December 1916; 11 & 12 December 1916; Orange Leader, 10 August 1917; 28 August 1916; 11 December 1916). The Leader reported attempts made by strikers to influence loyalists:

Several of the loyalists, who are working in the local yards, have received anonymous communications on deep mourning paper, requesting them to go to Fox Martin’s [a local chemist] for a pot of Zam-buck for their scabs, but no notice is taken of the impeachment, and the work of loading and unloading the trucks proceeds amicably (Orange Leader, 29 August 1917).

Reports in the Leader told of the determination of the strikers to ‘see the revolt to the end’, to ‘remain firm to their comrades in Sydney and other centres’, and that they would not ‘go back until they receive word from their union’s executive to do so’ (Orange Leader, 13 August 1917). This determination began to cause some consternation as despite the reporting of

5 previous days alleging that the ‘loyalists’ had managed with ease to take up the jobs of the wages men, the ‘railway yards never presented such an appearance of absolute desertion’. Evoking sombre scenes from the Western Front, the Leader described the ‘line upon line of idle carriages, trucks and engines ... standing [as] silent sentinels of the grim struggle’. The balance between silence and chaos in the yards was dependent on whether there were ‘sufficient men to man a train’, at moments when this became possible the yards would become animated and a train would be hastily made up ‘to relieve the tension at the many towns along the main trunk line and its branches’ (Orange Leader, 13 August 1917).

The strikers held daily mass meetings in the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) rooms in Anson Street and were in constant contact with the Sydney Defence Committee. Not simply parroting the message from Sydney, early on in the strike delegates from the Orange Defence Committee travelled to Cowra to urge the men there to go on strike (Orange Leader, 13 August 1917). This radicalisation built on the sharpened social divisions that occurred in the earlier fight over conscription. At the heart of this was a struggle over the use of language. As alluded to above, both sides invoked the terms scab or loyalist. The strikers, for example, were careful to present themselves as loyal to the war effort, as can be seen in reports from the local Defence Committee. In one report to the local paper the strikers were careful to point out they had pledged themselves ‘loyal to our King and country’ (Orange Leader, 13 August 1917; see also, AFULE General Committee Minutes (ARTSA Executive Minutes), 22 August 1917). This did not, however, stop the strikers from mocking the military language of the day. A Defence Committee meeting report revealed how ‘a little humour was put before the members’. It read

One of the members designated himself as a despatch [sic] officer to the commanding officer (chairman). Railway Fusiliers, 3rd Regiment. We made a brilliant stand on Anson Hill, situated behind River Ford, where many soldiers have been carried away by its running streams and currents in previous battles. Our soldiers made a firm stand against the approaching enemy, who advanced within range of our trenches. A fierce battle raged for four days in succession. The result was that the enemy was forced back and retreated in confusion. Casualties: Killed, nil; wounded, 3; missing, 6. Our regiment is prepared for the final attack, which is expected within 48 hours, and are sanguine of victory (Orange Leader, 13 August 1917).

Taksa has argued that the strike and parallel protest occurred ‘in the context of a culture which enabled working class people to challenge the government but which simultaneously confined their actions within the bounds of bourgeois morality and codes of respectability’ (Taksa, 1991, p. 19). Certainly the ‘well-mannered’ nature of the strike in Orange confirms this. However, the use of language, as above, is also indicative of a reflexive quality among the men, who were patently aware of their contradictory position and while not completely bound to a bourgeois sense of good taste, reveal some resentment in their satire.

The use of ‘loyalists’, often untrained, though occasionally retired railwaymen, was a cause of great concern and often mirth. The Orange Defence Committee warned the public of the dangers of the Department’s practice of overworking loyalists and using inexperienced men as drivers for trains between Orange and Bathurst. They warned that the men ‘now employed

6 in the loco running section in Orange are incompetent drivers, with the exception of three, and they are men who deserted their ranks as strikers.’ (Orange Leader, 13 August 1917). Even the local paper made fun of some of the loyalists. One editorial commented that a number of strikebreakers had already returned from Sydney, ‘not having found the conditions down below altogether to their liking’. It went on to say that ‘in all probability the Department had forgotten to put eau de cologne in their bath water, or omitted pate de foie gras from the menu’ (Orange Leader, 27 August 1917). The mockery in the passage at once distances the local paper from the reality of the class differences now patently evident in the strike and at the same time draws us closer to them. As they had (or would) in other districts, students from the local private school, Wolaroi, offered their services to the stationmaster (see McKernan, 1980, p. 55). Other loyalists from Orange left for centres including Bathurst and Sydney. The majority of loyalists, however, seem to have come from smaller towns in the district and carried with them the whiff of gentry. There was, however, the odd ‘old railway man’, one of whom went under the improbable name of Mary Hector. He left the small satellite town Millthorpe amid ‘cheers’ (and presumably a few jeers) from fellow townspeople. He went to work with the strikebreakers at Bathurst. (Orange Leader, 13 August 1917; 15 August 1917; 17 August 1917; 22 August 1917; Bathurst Times, 11 August 1917; Daily Telegraph, 14 August 1917). While these smaller stories confirm Turner’s suggestion of ‘unchallenged support for the government in the countryside’ the bigger picture is more complex (Turner, 1965, p. 160).

As the strike proceeded the government compiled ‘black lists’ of strikers. In an obvious attempt to intimidate strikers to go back to work, the railway staff clerk made it known to the local newspaper that he was ‘carefully noting those who are loyal and those who are returning to their duties.’ (Orange Leader, 13 August 1917). It was a harbinger of what was to come. On 15 August, two days after the report of the ‘black list’ was made known, all strikers were dismissed from the service. They were told to return all property belonging to the Government (Orange Leader, 15 August 1917; see also Taksa, 1991, p. 24). The strikers and their families decided to respond to the insult with ceremony; it would take the form of a community parade. The Orange Strike Defence Committee’s secretary, James McKinney, applied through the local council for permission to hold a procession from the AWU rooms to the railway station. The council agreed on the proviso that ‘no objectionable banners would be carried’: ‘they did not want any IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] elements introduced’. The strikers also proposed a ‘cemetery drive’, as the Bathurst strikers had done, to plant trees in honour of soldiers killed and wounded in the war. The wish to do so was explained by the Defence Committee ‘as our men are anxious to be of use of a patriotic nature’ (Orange Council Minutes, 14 August 1917; Orange Leader, 15 August 1917; The Bathurst National Advocate, 8 August 1917). Again, the competing interpretations of the precise nature of patriotism are apparent. But Taksa’s overall argument is again well-made: the strikers appear to be operating firmly within the moral boundaries of the bourgeoisie. The taint of the ‘shirker’, where even the striking returned soldier was deemed less patriotic than the ‘loyalist’ strikebreaker, would have been a bitter pill.

On the day of the parade hundreds of men, women and children formed a procession and marched to the station. The strikers and their supporters were led by the town band whose members had previously rejected the participation of two loyalists and who, as a result of their participation in the protest, found themselves in dispute with the local council for the next two years. The calm determination of the strikers is evident in a surprisingly sympathetic report by the Leader. The strikers ‘handed in their watches, uniforms, rule books, etc., in a

7 very orderly manner, and received their pay, also their formal discharge from the service.’ The men then gave ‘three cheers for the King, the townspeople, Mr Gow, steam shed inspector, and the men on strike, and then broke up.’ In their appeal to the same rational elements of localism, the strikers matched their opponents’ strategies. Losing the accoutrements of a job in the railways – whose kinship networks and heightened status provided succour and pride – would have been profoundly difficult to stomach, and yet the ritual provided the men and their families with their own form of dignity, though this would not be apparent to all who witnessed the parade (Orange Leader, 17 August 1917).

As the strike progressed, it was rumoured that the local branch of the Trolly and Draymen’s Union would join in. Aware of this, the loyalists called a second public meeting ‘to help the government’. In typical rambunctious fashion, the local Mayor, E.T. McNeilly, declared that ‘he would willingly shoulder a bayonet in defence of his country.’ The prominent anti- conscriptionist, James Loughnane, responded by demanding of McNeilly: ‘What would you do with the bayonet … stick it into the unionists?’ McNeilly’s response that he ‘would put it into anyone who came in front of [him]’ elicited a round of applause. The result of the meeting was the creation of a ‘vigilance committee’ that would ‘make all necessary arrangements for the further supply of voluntary labor to proceed to Sydney to render the Government every assistance during the currency of the strike’. Thirty-one volunteers offered their services. The meeting concluded with ‘Cheers for the King, the boys at the front, for loyalists’. A small but significant minority provided ‘counter cheers for the unionists’ (Orange Leader, 17 August 1917).

Despite the immense public pressure for men to return to work, with a few exceptions, those on strike remained firm. The Defence Committee, through McKinney, defended the actions of the strikers to the public, stressing that many were suffering as a consequence: ‘does anyone imagine for one moment’, he pointed out, ‘that railway employees come out on strike for the sheer love of the thing?’ (Orange Leader, 20 August 1917). Notwithstanding the egregious manner in which the strikers were treated and open acknowledgement by the local newspaper that they were ‘conducting themselves in a well-behaved manner, and with all due regard for law and order’, the strike further polarised the town. This is illustrated in a letter written to the Leader, by a ‘townsman’ who took umbrage at the procession of strikers to the railway station the week before. In his letter we see the deepening divide. He wrote:

The procession certainly brought the men, women and children together before the public, and it was noticed that three cheers were given for the King and three cheers for the boys at the front. What an awful contradiction from men who were with lips cheering, while in their hearts, they were defying all authority, acting in the most disloyal manner possible, by breaking the law at the bidding of irresponsibles, and taking part in the attempt to prevent supplies being sent to the boys at the front (Orange Leader, 22 August 1917; 24 August 1917).

The arrests of prominent strike leaders in Sydney and the cancellation of the registration of the unions (Orange Leader, 20 August 1917; 24 August 1917; Taksa, 1991, pp. 24-28) led some to question the motives of the government and increased sympathy for the strikers. In an ironic twist, Deputy Commissioner Edmund ‘Ironbark’ Milne died on the same day that a crowded public meeting in support of the strikers was held at the Australian Hall. A collector

8 of Aboriginal relics, he had a strong presence in Orange where he had been superintendent. Milne had been a popular and highly respected railwayman, but to the strikers was now on the ‘other side’. It is possible that some of the hostility to the strike from ex-railwaymen at the front, owed itself to a remembered perception of his benign administration (see, for example, Orange Leader, 19 July 1916). The Leader eulogised Milne as Commissioner Fraser’s ‘right hand man … in the present upheaval’, and decried Milne’s death as a ‘State Calamity’ (Orange Leader, 24 August 1917).

In a further instance of the hegemonic struggle evident in 1917, Mayor McNeilly, the same man who had threatened the strikebreakers with the bayonet only days before, chaired the Australian Hall meeting. Notwithstanding the degree of polarisation around the strike, McNeilly’s presence was indicative of a degree of commonality around the demand for the Government to intervene to settle the strike, from both loyalists and strikers. At the meeting, C. Robertson, from the Sydney Executive, put the strikers’ case before the meeting. He received applause when he said that ‘the present trouble had been forced on them, and they would not resume until they got a fair deal.’ Roland Plowman, who had been voted off council due largely to his anti-conscription stance, moved

That, in view of the failure of the parties concerned to arrive at a settlement of the present industrial upheaval, and in view of the general disorganisation of the industries and businesses of the State, this public meeting of the citizens of Orange, comprising all shades of political opinion, urges the Government to at once appoint an independent tribunal to act with a view to the immediate settlement of the existing dispute, also that the foregoing resolution be conveyed to the Government of the State (Orange Leader, 24 August 1917).

As Taksa’s research on the strike reveals, similar motions were passed in many centres, including Newcastle and Paddington; however, ‘the government ... remained deaf to these popular appeals for ameliorative intervention’ (Taksa, 1991, p. 26).

At the end of August the Leader continued to present the men as unwilling participants in the strike for fear of being called a ‘scab’. In doing so it deftly, though not necessarily successfully, drove a wedge between collective solidarity and family responsibilities. On 31 August 1917 a report in the paper read:

The position in Orange as regards the strike remains unchanged. The men are still determined to hold out, though they almost all admit they are in the wrong ... Collectively the men are adamant, but their individual opinion is that they are on a wrong track ... The empty pockets at the end of each fortnight are beginning to tell a tale, and the dwindling of the small nest egg (saved up against the proverbial rainy day) is causing the striker’s helpmeet a deal of anxiety. Comestibles were never dearer than at present, and storekeepers cannot afford to dole out their tea and sugar, unless there is an equivalent in cash forthcoming. Matters must become worse each day the strike is prolonged, and, the longer the men stay out, the more proficient are the volunteers who have taken their places becoming, till, when the

9 former apply to be reinstated, they will be told that they are not wanted (Orange Leader, 31 August 1917).

Amid fears of the possible loss of the gas supply for Orange, the Leader maintained that ‘in the late big strike in New Zealand it was the farmers who broke it up, and it is the farmers of New South Wales who are breaking up the present revolution.’ (Orange Leader, 31 August 1917). The heightened language shows the deepening faultlines between the Empire loyalists and unionists and the regrouping of alliances that would continue to affect Australian politics long into the 1920s and beyond (Moore, 1995).

Eventually, negotiations to end the strike were held between the government and the Sydney Defence Committee, with the latter urging all members to ‘return to work’. When they did return, ‘they found they could not sign on as a body’ (Taksa, 1991, p. 27). At Orange the men believed they ‘had been tricked’ by the Government and Defence Committee and refused to return (Orange Leader, 12 September 1917; Daily Telegraph, 12 September 1917; The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 September 1917. The Australian Worker, 15 September 1917). As pointed out by the Australian Worker and shared by the men on strike, the cards they were required to sign were a final, deep and unforgivable humiliation (see also Gollan, 1963, p. 154). Even if the men did sign, those that had gone on strike had no guarantee of a job, or if they did, no guarantee of their prior ‘grade, seniority, and rate of pay’. The cards read

NSW Government Railways and Tramways. Form of Application for Re- Employment of Men who left duty on strike. Reference No. ....… Name in Full. ..… I hereby make application for re-employment in the Commissioners’ service and fully understood that if it be approved it is on the condition that my re- employment will be governed by such directions as have been issued by the Commissioners in regard to grade, seniority, and rate of pay. Signature. … Date. … Witness (The Australian Worker, 15 September 1917).

A week later the Orange strikers went en masse to sign the forms at the station. None was available. The Leader reported with familiar condescension:

They are aware that they have lost their grades, but one of them remarked last night, it will not take us long to regain them. They were out exactly six weeks, which means six weeks’ loss of pay, and has thrown them back considerably. One thing, we must congratulate the men on is their orderly conduct all through, their leaders here giving them to understand that they would brook no hooliganism or disturbance of any kind (Orange Leader, 19 September 1917).

For the men returning to work, however, the situation was not so simple. Several were told that ‘their services were no longer required’ (Orange Leader, 21 September 1917; All Grades Advocate, 18 October 1917). And there were numerous cases of victimisation. The figures for employment at the Orange railway station show that it is not until 1919 that the number of those employed reached levels before the strike (Report of the Commissioners, for year ending June 30, 1919, p. 67). The railway workers had been split, and loyalist unions emerged

10 alongside reconstituted older unions (Orange Leader, 7 November 1917. Minutes of the Association of Employees (Mechanical Branch) NSW Government Railways, for example, 18 October 1917; 24 November 1917; 12 January 1918 and 27 September 1919). The bitterness felt by the strikers at their treatment by the government was evident at the Orange Eight-Hour banquet held in October. In what must have been a most uncomfortable meeting, the local Nationalist member, J.C.L. Fitzpatrick, was continually heckled during his speech. He and Labor Senator Gardiner crossed swords over the question of victimisation of railwaymen. Fitzpatrick denied that any incidents of victimisation were occurring. Gardiner responded with an offer to ‘resign from the Senate’ if it could be shown that no such victimisation had taken place. He would not need to (Orange Leader, 22 October 1917; 26 October 1917).

Examining the 1917 General Strike in a town such as Orange shows the difficulties associated with the development of political communities existing in close proximity. The social fabric created through the ‘Deakinite compact’ was arguably more illusory and haphazard than commonly supposed, as the squabbles surrounding the liberal fusion of 1909 showed. While Taksa argues that the language and behaviour used during the strike reveals that unionists were confined within a bourgeois morality, this paper suggests instead that we are seeing an end process of a transmutation in language: the Deakinite compact succeeded in attaining hegemonic power because governments burrowed into the words of the working class and vice versa. Taksa’s suggestions are borne out when we remember the three cheers for God, King and Country, but there is less certainty when looking at the intention behind the words of ‘scab’, ‘mateship’ and ‘loyalty’. The tentative argument raised here relates to the hidden nuances embedded within the shared language that we use. Australian English with its economical vocabulary gives to common words malleable meanings. In 1917 in Orange, the common language became less adaptable and stridently adversarial. It is possible to argue, though as yet difficult to prove, that the war and the strike released words from their benign usage; for a brief period we can witness a semiotic battle between and within political communities.

REFERENCE LIST * With thanks to Braham Dabscheck, Phillip Deery and Peter Love for their constructive criticism AFULE (NSW Division) E99/3/3-3/4: AFULE General Committee Minutes (ARTSA Executive Minutes), Noel Butlin Archive Centre. Deposit: E99. D. Aitkin, ‘‘Countrymindedness’. The spread of an idea’, Australian Cultural History, no. 4, pp. 31-41.

Robert Bollard, ‘‘The Active Chorus’: The Great Strike of 1917 in Victoria’, Labour History, vol. 90, May 2006. Dan Coward, ‘Crime and Punishment: The Great Strike in New South Wales, August to October 1917’, in John Iremonger, John Merritt and Graeme Osborne (eds), Strike: Studies in Twentieth Century Australian Social History, Angus and Robertson (With ASSLH), Sydney, 1973. Robin Gollan, The Coalminers of New South Wales: A History of the Union 1860-1960, MUP, Parkville, 1963. J. Habermas, ‘Further Reflections on the Public Sphere’, in Calhoun, C. (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1992. Eric Hobsbawm, Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz, The New Press, New York, 1998. M. Hurd, ‘Class, Masculinity, Manners, and Mores: Public Space and Public Sphere in Nineteenth Century Europe’, Social Science History, vol. 24, no. 1, Spring 2000.

11 Ken Inglis, Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, 2001. Kirkpatrick, R., ‘How newspaper editor’s helped the country to become politically articulate’, Australian Journalism Review, vol. 22, no. 1, 2000, pp. 118-136. Henry Mayer, The Press in Australia, Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1968. Michael McKernan, The Australian People and the Great War, Thomas Nelson Australia, West Melbourne, 1980. Andrew Moore, The Right Road? A History of Right-wing Politics in Australia, Oxford University Press (OUP), Melbourne, 1995. National Union of Railway Men of Australia, 1887 to 1949, E80/60/32, Noel Butlin Archive Centre. Deposit: E80. National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), Minutes of the Association of Employees (Mechanical Branch) NSW Government Railways, E80/5/1, Noel Butlin Archive Centre. New South Wales Government Railways and Tramways, Report of the Commissioners, 30 June, 1914. New South Wales Government Railways and Tramways, Report of the Commissioners, June 30, 1917. New South Wales Government Railways and Tramways, Report of the Commissioners, June 30, 1919. Orange Branch Returns, NSW Locomotive Engine Drivers, Firemen and Cleaners’ Association, Noel Butlin Archive Centre, Deposit E99/15/1. Orange Council Minutes, 1917. Greg Patmore, ‘A History of Industrial Relations in the NSW Government Railways: 1855-1929’, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, 1985. Lucy Taksa, ‘‘Defence not Defiance’: Social Protest and the NSW General Strike of 1917’, Labour History, no. 60, May 1991, pp. 16-33. Ian Turner, Industrial Labour and Politics: The Labour movement in Eastern Australia, 1900-1921, Australian National University, Canberra, 1965.

Newspapers/Periodicals All Grades Advocate. The Australian Worker. The Bathurst National Advocate. The Bathurst Times. The Daily Telegraph. The Evening News. The NSW Railway and Tramway Review. The Orange Leader. The Railway and Tramway Co-operator. The Sydney Morning Herald.

i This paper has been peer reviewed by two anonymous referees.