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'Pumping the Life-Blood into Politics and Place': labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops

Luey Taksa*

This article examines interconnections between workplace, culture and politics at the New South Wales Government's Eve/eigh railway workshaps and in the predominantly working class communities that surrounded it between the 1880s and the 1930s. It begins by considering the nature of culture and its political and spatial dimensions. On this basis it identifies the cultural building blocks that existed in the workshaps and beyond their boundaries and the way they were connected to the institutions of the labour movement and the activities of its leaders. By focusing on industrial and political meetings that were held in the local streets, halls and hotels, as well as in the workshaps and on their boundaries, the article shows how such working class cultural practices enabled workers to protect their working conditions and also enabled them and their families, neighbours and Labor leaders, to articulate and communicate shared values and aspirations. These practices, I argue, created an impression of a common class Identity that drew on, co-existed with and at times subsumed, other sources of identity. It was through them that working class peaple politicised their grievances and pursued a better quality ofUfe. For this reason, they provide an insight into the roots of labour's political culture in a specific urbon context.

Almost a decade ago, Erik Olssen and Jeremy Brecher argued that railway workshops, where locomotives, carriages and wagons were built, 'constitute an important cultural context in their own right' because they represent the factory system and the railway system, both of which were 'two of the central elements of the industrial revolution'. As well, their study of the government-owned Hillside railway workshops in New Zealand underlined the significance of political and cultural processes in shaping workers' struggles for control over the labour process, particularly in the distinctive political context of New Zealand's small, colonial economy. In this account, culture was viewed within the spatial confines of this one workplace and it was defined in terms of craft identity based on knowledge of the production process, control over the organisation of work, regular employment and patterns of recruitment and training. Its political dimension was considered in relation to the nexus between government ownership, the workshops' employees ability to politicise their grievances to protect craft control, and the influence railway workers were able to exert over Government, through their union and the ballot box, and by virtue of the railways' importance to the nation's economy.l This paper draws inspiration from these scholars to the extent that it considers interconnections between workplace, culture and politics in relation to the New South Wales (NSW) Government's Eveleigh railway workshops, which operated in Sydney between the late 18805 and the late 1980s. Its approach to politics is similar, although its focus is not on the protection of craft control nor does it construe culture in terms of occupational identities and practices, and struggles over the labour process. Rather, its aim is to investigate the political culture of Eveleigh's employees more broadly.

11 Labour History. Number 79 • November 2000

There are two reasons for this departure. First, railway workshops not only operated in specific economic and political contexts but also specific geographical contexts. Because they influenced human habitation in their immediate surrounds, such factories also reflected the spread of urbanisation that accompanied the industrial revolution and created its own cultural context.2 Second, Eveleigh's employees were inspired to action not just by the need to protect working conditions but also the desire to improve the social and political prospects available to working class people. Accordingly, the paper does not spatially restrict culture to this one workplace. Instead, it focuses on the cultural building blocks that linked these workers to those who lived around it and on those cultural practices that were adopted in the workplace and also outside it in the surrounding localities, to promote class interests. What can these links tell us about working class culture? This question raises a number of more fundamental ones like: What is culture? How can its essential features be identified? How is it related to politics? In order to address these questions and establish a conceptual framework, the paper begins with a discussion of definitions and approaches. It then identifies the way the cultural building blocks that existed in the workshops and also beyond their boundaries were connected to the institutions of the labour movement and the activities of its leaders. This approach seeks to limit a very complex and broad subject to manageable proportions and also to draw attention to the roots of labour's political culture in a specific urban context. To this end, the paper examines those industrial and political practices that stretched across Eveleigh and the surrounding communities and the places in which those practices were enacted. In this way I hope to identify the mortar that bound together the worlds of work, leisure and politics in Eveleigh's vicinity. The treatment builds on the studies of working class communities produced by Stuart Macintyre and Janet McCalman, which acknowledged the political dimensions of working class culture. As Kosmas Tsokhas pointed out ina review of such labour histories, proletarian culture was by its very nature political because it emerged through and was sustained by class struggles and its various forms of expression helped working class people make sense of a complex social reality and exhorted them to political action. Unlike earlier labour histories that had considered working class politics by focusing on party machinations and leaders, these studies 'shied away from the study of institutions, focusing instead on the broader culture of the working class'.' Influenced by the debates among and studies by labour historians in the United Kingdom and the United States that were sparked by E.P. Thompson's work on the English working class, they addressed 'history from below', emphasising popular culture, working class politics, broadly constituted, experience, consciousness and the texture of everyday life.4 Two outcomes of these historiographical trends need to be considered at the outset. The first concerns the relationship between the institutional and cultural approaches to labour history, and the second concerns the relationship between the Thompsonian and post­

from a structural point of view, diversity is 'given', irrespective of human volition, by the very existence of the (increasingly sophisticated) division of labour, including the sexual division of labour, and variations in income" skill and so forth, among workers. However, it is useful to remind ourselves that such structural underpinnings of difference do not, in themselves, necessarily give rise to divisions and conflicts. The latter may of course, develop. But they are contingent upon the play of historical forces ... the notion that diversity more or less automatically rules out class-based mutuality and solidarity is wide of the mark. Elements of diversity and similarity, and of division and unity coexist among workers.ll

This argument is immensely pertinent to the present study of cultural continuities rather than discontinuities, shared interests and practices rather than divergent ones. In agreeing with Kirk, the following treatment certainly makes an effort to identify some sources of difference that potentially divided those who worked at Eveleigh and lived near it. 12 But the emphasis is not on them, nor on the conflicts that were sometimes caused by them in the workplace, the neighbourhood, the union or the Labor Party. In essence, I hope to identify those communal bonds and practices that generated class-based mutuality and solidarity and sought political outcomes that would improve the prospects of working class people. This of course brings us back to the issue of definitions and approaches.

Culture and Politics: Defining the Terrain According to Lex Heerma van Voss and Frits van Holthoon all definitions of culture 'can be traced to two key concepts'. These were effectively summarised by Raymond Williams as referring to 'a whole way of life' or to the arts and learning. Albeit to varying degrees both concepts infer common experiences, habits of thought, language, symbols, shared perceptions of social relationships, morals, values, rituals, myths and patterns of behaviour, laws, rules, policies, and interpretations and representations of a given social reality." To the extent that these cultural forn1S and expressions all assume integrative processes that unite people in the mind and on the ground, it becomes necessary to consider those structures, institutions and practices that generate shared experiences, moral codes and collective values. Of course certain structures, like those that produce class relations, differentiate people and distinguish them from others. As Gerald M. Sider pointed out, however, the anthropological concept of culture is not particularly 'effective for analYSing class-based societies'. This is particularly evident when it is considered in relation to the concept of class. For while the latter is dynamic, relational and processual and focuses on the material forces of production and 'the property relationships through which surpluses are formed, transferred and Taksa • Labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops

transformed', the 'concept of culture - as shared values ... beliefs, symbols and rituals-lacks a dynamic and processual core'." How can the two concepts be related to each other in a way that makes it possible to explore the culture of working class people in a specific local context? One way is to view culture not simply as 'an interlocking, "functionally integrated" set of customs', but instead as being 'rooted in the social relations of daily life and production'. Another is to extend the definition of culture from a 'whole way of life' to 'a whole way of conflict' because this recognises that culture cannot be separated from class and that it reflects class relations and divisions." In this regard, van Voss and van Holthoon provide a useful guide. As they point out, historians need a 'first step' definition that 'does not deny the possibility that culture is a semiotic system', nor that it 'is involved in a process of rule making, or that it is an important component in group identification, or that individuals have to be initiated in it by education', hut at the same time recognises that culture is also a mechanism of negotiation and transaction. This definition makes it possible to acknowledge that culture both unifies and divides different groups of people and that the tendency in either direction is shaped by the selection of repertoires and meanings that are available at any given moment as a result of broader social forces and political and cultural relations. The'choiceof cultural forms is inherently political because it involves accommodation, contestation and resistance.16 Accepting this emphasis on negotiation raises the issue of power relations. According to Eileen Yeo, such relations 'need to be understood as part of cultural form' because, on the one hand, they limit and constrain cultural fonn and on the other hand, 'cultural fonn provides a key experience of power relations' . What does Yeo mean by 'cultural form'? In her study of popular culture in England from 1789, Yeo defined it as 'the content and social organisation of activities which embody and which produce values and meanings', both in 'the world of work' and the 'world of leisure'. In this regard, she drew attention to those recreational practices that were controlled by working class people, some of which incorporated political purposes, and the way they were attacked, suppressed or regulated, particularly by the state. This treatment certainly extended culture beyond the notion of 'a way of life' to 'ways of producing social life and consciousness within social relations and social struggle' .17 But it made certain assumptions about power that need to be addressed in order to establish a foundation for considering the relationship between culture and politics. According to Stephen Lukes, a distinction can be made between 'power over' and 'power to', whereby the former refers to a relationship of domination, and the latter refers to a resource that can be mobilised to accomplish particular ends." While Yeo's treatment emphasised the former view, it is possible to consider working class culture from the latter, on the assumption that the two are not mutually exclusive, and indeed, that power as a resource forms a subset of broader relations of power. From this perspective, cultural practices through which working class people challenge those who oppress them and seek to enhance their own position and prospects can be construed as the means by which workers and their families pursue social and economic goals within the constraints imposed by capitalist society. In turn, viewing cultural form as both resistance to power and resistance for power demands attention to oppositional practices and also recognition that they take place in specific places and often involve an effort to 'appropriate space'." labour History. Number 79 • November 2000

Such links between culture, resistance, politics and place were consistently stressed by Raymond Williams, whose attention to the roots and character of political commitment, the values of community and the nexus between community and communication foreshadowed much of the recent work on the politics of identity, on the spatial dimensions of resistance, and also cultural citizenship." For Williams, 'a distinct working class way of life' was evident in the emphasis on shared experiences, neighbourhood, mutual obligation, and individual and collective concerns about quality of life, which were expressed 'in the great working~c1ass political and industrial institutions'. Such concerns were central to the nexus between culture and politics because in Williams' view the process of participation, and particularly democratic participation was critical to the 'creation of a condition in which the people as a whole participate in the articulation of meanings and values'. Communication was, in his view, a central feature of such participation. 'What we have to try and see', he argued, are patterns of communication.:21 How can such patterns be discerned in cultural life and directly related to everyday practices? According to Williams, we need to begin by considering formal and informal communication systems. For Williams, the features of the places in which people live, the prominent buildings or aspects of the natural landscape that somehow express 'the meaning of what it is to live in that place, and around that building, around that feature' play an important role in informal communication. On the other hand, Williams identified institutions that revolve around religion, information, persuasion, entertainment and art as more formal information systems." What sort of buildings, features and institutions that operated in the districts surrounding Eveleigh can be viewed in this light? For the purpose of this paper, Eveleigh itself, as well as the halls and hotels that were frequented by its employees, their families, neighbours and political leaders, can be viewed as informal communication systems. At the same time, institutions like the farriily, the church, recreational organisations and the labour movement can be viewed as more formal communication systems. What is the relationship between these two sorts of communication systems? I would suggest that the street and the neighbourhood provided the cultural interface between them. Because both contexts provided the space for communication, socialisation and resistance, they created links between work, home, leisure and politics. Focusing on such links, I argue, throws light on working class culture in Sydney during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As numerous historians have shown, appropriation of the street was an important aspect of working class culture, one that has been increasingly restricted by a range of cultural processesP It is precisely for this reason that this terrain needs to be examined closely." As many scholars have indicated, neighbourhood streets provided an important micro-world that linked the family to the community. In a very physical sense the streets provided the bridge between the workplace and the home through the daily journey to and from work. And while men, women and children used the streets in different ways, they did interact in them both formally and informally. As Maggie Indian points out, such interactions created a context in which 'people who did not share a common work experience' formed bonds with each other.2S The street and the neighbourhood provided the context for a range of cultural pursuits, some of which were political and all of which were free. Informal contact Taksa • labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops in the streets gave the impression, so often raised. in oral history interviews, that 'everyone knew everyone'. As John Willis commented, We got to know a lot of people in those days because everybody congregated'. And John Mongan reiterated, 'people used to congregate. They used to mix more even at processions and all that sort of thing. There was more social mixing amongst the working class than any other class of people.' In Edna Ryan's view, this helped to create a feeling of unity and togetherness among working class people.'" Such 'mixing' built on regular family and neighbourhood interaction. Alice Doyle, who lived in Redfern and Darlington during the early decades of the twentieth century, highlighted the relationship between such interactions, class identification and the pursuit of political goals. In Darlington, she said, 'every evening people would come out the front of their house' to socialise and talk about their common plight. The feeling of the family', she added, 'oh well, they were all in favour of getting their better conditions, always. They were always Labor people.''' Such goals were pursued through formal street meetings where family, neighbourhood and political networks converged. And while women were not prominent in such activities, their presence is consistently noted in both newspaper and oral accounts. Street meetings, like union and party meetings in halls and pubs, brought people together and enabled them to reflect on shared material circumstances and to exchange infonnation. Numerous infonnants recall such practices. Nick Edwards described how they were generally held:

on the most advantageous corner where there was adequate lighting and adequate space for people to assemble ... in some part of the suburb where ... there would be enough room for ... somebody to get up on a box and talk to them.28

And Alice Doyle descnbed how '(t)hey'd be driving round and they'd be dinging on the bell, you know, "so and so tonight, so and so corner". And that's where you'd go and have a listen to the spruiker'. She stressed: 'oh we used to look forward to those. We'd go and line up and listen off someone's balcony'." John Mongan went to such meetings with 'all the kids in the street'. As he explained 'You see the kids were all politically conscious in those days. You see you had no money'. As this railway employee, who was 'always Labor', saw it decades later, during 'that era it was class warfare ... Of course the other class was trytngto ground the lower class lower'." It is In these representations that we find what Sider refers to the 'core of culture', which he defined as 'the way people conceptualize and express their relations to one another', and which he suggested:

seems more to be based. on the actual ties people develop with one another in the course of organizing both the labour of production and daily life, and the social appropriation of the product. Rooted on the one hand in the ties people develop in the context of productive labour, family, neighbourhood and market, and on the other hand in the ties of unequal appropriation, culture combines and expresses both these aspects of the social relations of production. 31

For the purposes of this paper such ties are considered in terms of the family, religion, neighbourhood, recreation, work and occupation, and labour movement Labour History. Number 79 • November 2000 organisations, all of which provided sources of integration !hat underpinned working class struggles in the industrial and political arenas. These cultural building blocks formed part of everyday life in the Eveleigh workshops and in the surrounding localities. What evidence can be used to explore the connections between these cultural building blocks, the practices and places that provided channels of communication among working class people and through which they conceptualised and expressed their relations with each other? Three types of sources are particularly useful. Newspapers provide us with accounts of meetings, who organised and attended them and where they were held. Biographies and autobiographies of labour leaders sketch out the different ways in which they were associated with the communities they represented. And memories provide us with an insight into the broader experience of working class cultural practices and the meanings that were attached to them. Through these sources, the following account traces the roots of labour's political culture in and around the Eveleigh railway workshops.

The Heart of the NSW Transport System In 1855, the NSW Government took over the railways and soon afterwards it established workshops at the Redfern railway station. Here the first government­ made locomotive was produced in 1870, although most construction work of this sort was contracted to private firms, while the workshops focused. on repair and maintenance. Five years later, when this 27 acre site proved inadequate, the Government bought a block of land nearby for new workshops. Known as Eveleigh, this site traversed both sides of the main railway corridor to the city's railway terminus at Redfem. When the workshops were completed in 1887 they were divided into four main sections. The eastern and southern sides of the railway tracks, bordering the suburbs of Redfem, Waterloo, Alexandria and Erskineville, were occupied by running sheds, engine and boiler houses, shunting yards and a locomotive workshop building in which work was sub-divided into 16 separate Bays. In 1899 a new foundry and a large erecting shop were also built on the southern and western sides of the locomotive workshops building, while in 1906 a new locomotive workshops consisting of two Bays was built on its eastern flank. The northern and western side of the tracks, bordering the suburbs of Redfern, Darlington, and McDonaldtown, was occupied by the railway stores, a paint and trimming shop, and a carriage and wagon repairing workshop. This side also included 'a handsome two-story brick building, containing eight large' offices for the Chief Mechanical Engineer and his 'large clerical staW." These spatial arrangements would have profound social implications because they created sectional identities for Eveleigh's employees. By 1890-91, when the permanent railway workforce had reached 11,827 and railway employment accounted for four and a half per cent of total male employees in NSW, around two and a half thousand people were employed at Eveleigh. In 1900, ten per cent of the NSW Department of Railways' workforce was employed there and by 1912, the number of employees had grown to 3,270 people." This workforce was made up of skilled and unskilled male workers who repaired and maintained railway rolling stock, assembled steam locomotives, built and painted carriages. Between 1907 and 1925, some also manufactured locomotives. Women Taksa • labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops 19 also performed a range of ancillary functions, like carriage upholstery, office cleaning and clerical work. Between 1942 and 1943 they worked in Eveleigh's munitions annexe, although the majority of these women came from country districts. After the war, women were hired as indusmal nurses, canteen staff and train cleaners and during the 1980s small numbers taught English to migrant workers and obtained apprenticeships. Little information is available on the majority of these Eveleigh employees, but genealogical reconstructions of the upholsteresses and cleaners show that they were among numerous family members employed at Eveleigh. Oral sources of other long-term women employees indicate that such kinship networks continued to exist at least until the 19505." Eveleigh workers were not only divided by gender but also by the Railways Department's bureaucratic structure, by occupation and union membership. Different Departmental branches and grades and management's divide-and-rule strategies segmented the workforce. The growing number of occupations that were represented in the workshops also created differences. In 1887, the year Eveleigh began full operations, there were 217 fitters, 74 boilermakers and 136 coachmakers employed by the NSW railways. By 1899 the total number of occupational categories represented at Eveleigh that were included in the Government Gazette Employee lists amounted to 180. The increasing number of unions that were represented in the workshops also encouraged sectional interests. The most prominent of these were the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the Australasian Engineers, the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron and Ship Builders, the Iron Workers Assistants, the Coachmakers, the Tinsmiths' and Sheet Iron Workers Trade Society, the Locomotive Engine Drivers' and Firemen's and Cleaner's Association, the Amalgamated Railways and Tramways Association (ARTSA), and the Painters Union. Disputes over coverage reinforced divisions among the members of these different unions." Some decades later, after the NSW General Strike of 1917, which started in the railway and tramway workshops, open conflict occurred with the management-approved unions that were formed by strikebreakers. Such conflict mirrored hostility on the shop floor between those who obtained jobs at Eveleigh during this dispute and the strikers who regained their jobs after it, at lower grades." Formal operational and spatial arrangements also divided Eveleigh. Speaking of the 19505, Brian Dunnett commented that the workers' 'identity was very much related to their working situation' and 'the type of work they were doing ... If they were actually working on the steam engines well then they identified with that piece of equipment, if they were working on carriages then they would identify there'.37 As Hal Alexander, who worked in the Carriage shops commented, 'There was a bit of jealousy about the loco side and the carriage side. There was a dozen train tracks in between but it could have been a mile wide'.38 This spatial segregation prevented interaction between those employed in the Loco workshops and the Running sheds even though they were on the same side of the railway line. At Christmas both groups would have their own 'break up parties' and while they exchanged Chrisbnas greetings, those employed in the loco shops 'never sort of came down and interfered with ours and we never interfered with theirs' .39 Yet, while spatial isolation, shiftwork, craft traditions and union membership differentiated Eveleigh workers, they also provided the foundation for collectivism, which enabled workers to enforce norms on output, engage in indusbial action in Labour History· Number 79 • November 2000

the period leading up to and including 1917, and fonm shop committees and hold mass meetings after this date.40 In short, Eveleigh was an industrial space that provided the infrastructure for the colony's transport system and a political space in which power was exercised not only by the state and bureaucratic authority, but also by the workers. In 1939, the communist shop committee and Australian Railway Union (ARU) stalwart, Stan Jones, described the Eveleigh railway workshops as 'the heart of the NSW transport system', where 2,600 workers were 'seemingly submerged' by 'a steady drone of high-powered machinery'. These people were, he argued, extremely important 'to the Labour Movement, politically and industrially'. The majority were by this time members of the 12 trade unions that had coverage in the workshops. They also fonmed the vanguard of the shop committee movement and 'pulled their weight' politically. In 1926, one of the first shop committees in NSW was fonmed at Eveleigh and in that year too, employees contributed 600 pounds towards Labor's election fund. Jones therefore concluded that while Eveleigh's presses thumped, machines hummed and hammers clanged so 'that diverse elements could be united in mechanical action', the workers were 'also being united by the processes of human relationships'.41 By the time Stan wrote these words, Eveleigh had been operating for over 50 years on a 62 acre site that was four kilometres south of Sydney's Central Business District and surrounded by six inner-city suburbs." During this period, much like the ensuing 50 years of Eveleigh's life, the workshops had a profound impact on the surrounding localities, as well as on the state's, if not also the nation's politics. Approximately 25 of its employees became state and federal Parliamentarians and three became Labor Premiers of NSW." Even the less prominent employees played an important political role, which led Labor politicians like J.T. Lang and Jim Scullin to organise election rallies at these workshops.44 Such activities illustrate the way that Eveleigh itself provided a communication centre for working class people.

The Birth of Workplace Culture and Politics Politics was embedded in Eveleigh's workplace culture. Government ownership meant that collective bargaining involved railway employees in political lobbying. In turn, such political experience, combined with residential concentration in particular electorates, enabled them to play an influential role in electoral outcomes. The emergence of the Eight Hour Day movement during the 1850s, the formation of the Sydney Trades and Labor Council in 1871, craft and railway unions during the 1880s and the Australian Labor Party in 1891, also created a communication system among Eveleigh's employees that shaped their cultural practices and political participation." Initially, railway workers appealed to governments to redress their grievances by drawing on their networks with politicians who raised railway workers' problems, presented their petitions and introduced resolutions on their behalf in the NSW parliament. Throughout the 1870s, this sort of co-operation was encouraged by the government's intervention into the running of the railways, which also led railway workers to form temporary combinations to exploit political patronage in appointments. The Eight Hour Day movement in which railway employees were active participants, extended the workplace networks that operated in the Redfem Taksa • labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops 21 railway workshops. Some of the workshops' leading activists established links with the Labor Council of NSW, which began lobbying for shorter hours in the railways within two years of its formation. The Council's ability to mobilise networks with politicians was based on its close association with the earliest working class Members of Parliament, some of who had been Labor Council delegates." Underpinning these labour movement networks were dense interpersonal networks within the railway service, which relied on family ties. Like in the United States, Canada, England and New Zealand, sons of employees often foliowed their fathers into the railways. In Sydney women also joined their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons and daughters at Eveleigh." More formal networks were forged through temporary coalitions that opposed wage cuts and fought for reduced hours of work, and through benefit societies that were formed prior to the 1880s to help workers deal with accidents and deaths and to fulfil social and recreational needs. These were reinforced, during the 1880s, when the general growth of unions in Australia spread to the railways and those that represented boilermakers and engine drivers and firemen began making claims on behalf of members at the locomotive workshops, particularly for a closed union shop. Others, like the Railway and Tramway Employees Association, which was formed in 1879 and reorganised as the Amalgamated Railway and TramwayService Association (ARTSA) in 1886, began trying to overcome divisions between the skilled and unskilled by uniting workers across the entire industry.4B This union played a decisive role in establishing fonnal COIUlectiOns between industrial and political networks because its first Secretary, William Francis Schey, was elected to the NSW Parliament for the seat of Redfern in 1887. Schey retained his links with railway workers by continually raising issues that concerned them in the Parliament. During the 1894 election, when he stood for the seat of Darlington, an electorate that was extremely poor, congested and dominated by the working class Irish, they elected him as a representative of the newly formed Labor Party." Schey was one of a small group of men that formalised links between railway workers, the labour movement and politics and that included Henry Clement Hoyle,'" Cornelius James Danahey" and James SinclalrTaylor McGowen. To varying degrees, all three influenced the early political culture of the labour movement not only because they were prominent in their unions but also because of their involvement with the Labor Party. Of these men McGowen had the greatest influence on labour politics. Apprenticed as a boilermaker at P.N. Russel and Co. in 1870, he joined the Boilermakers' Society when it was formed in 1873 and was its Secretary intermittently from 1874 until 1890. In 1875 he obtained work at the Redfem railway workshops and later transferred to Eveleigh, during which time he helped to gain a closed shop on behalf of his union. In 1885 he became a delegate to the Labor Council and in 1888 he was elected the President of the Eight Hour Day Committee and also to the Labor Council executive, positions he retained until 1891. Known locally as 'Honest Jim', he was the only official Labor Party candidate for a Redfem seat in 1891, which he won. Chosen as leader of the state Parliamentary Party in 1894, he continued to represent this electorate in the NSW Parliament until 1917. According to Nairn, he was a religious man who actively worked to relieve distress in his local community. As the Superintendent of the Sunday School at SI. Paul's Church in Redfem for 32 years, he was also prominent in the district's Anglican community. 52 Labour History· Number 79 • November 2000

The careers and activities of these men demonstrate the way that railway employees united to politicise their workplace grievances and pursue broader improvements for working class people. As Scates points out, the early Labor politicians 'galvanized the energies of work site and neighbourhood, home and community: Their ability to do so was based on cultural practices that tied a range of networks to particular places. In fact, the Labor Party was able to harness industrial networks, as well as local community networks because its meetings were held not only in workplaces and union offices but also in local pubs and halls, which were often themselves associated with a range of labour movement organisations.53 McGowen personified the labour movement's and more specifically the Labor Party's 'deep social roots'. His own industrial, political and social activities highlight the networks that nourished working class culture and also the ritual practices that formed part of everyday politics for his working class constituents. His importance to the culture of railway unionism was demonstrated ata meeting held by theARTSA in the Protestant Hall on 10 August 1901. Formally held to consider how to better pursue shorter hours and improved appeals procedures in the railways, the occasion was also used to present McGowen with a gold watch for 'his services to the railway employees' and 'in the interests of humanity generally'. As Bede Nairn points out, despite its internal divisions, the labour movement had established 'its own traditions, its norms of conduct and modes of operation'. By the 1890s, its political involvements included 'practically all aspects of civilized life'." In 1901, McGowen addressed several hundred supporters from the balcony of Liversedge's Hall in Abercrombie Street, Redfern, on which the Darlington Political Labour League also had its rooms.55 Running parallel to Eveleigh's northern border, Abercrombie Street provided an important location for working class political culture. Also in 1901, the Australian Socialist League held an election meeting outside the Glengarry Castle Hotel, on the corner of Wells and Abercrombie Streets, where the Locomotive Engine-drivers, Firemen and Cleaners Association had held its meetings during the 1890s strikes. A few years later, in April 1904, 50 members of the Darlington Labor League met at this Hotel to discuss the need to find 'a strong candidate' for the coming state election.56 Also around this time, meetings of the Darlington and Camperdown branches of the South Sydney Federal Labor League were repeatedly held at Hayden's Hotel, which was on the corner of Codrington and Abercrombie Streets. It was here that the Leagues' representatives 'decided to hold a public open air meeting' and to invite McGowen to address it. Held in July 1905, this meeting was used as an opportunity to exhort workers 'to keep their Labor Leagues alive and active in order to ensure representation in Parliament.'57 McGowen not only had a profound impact on the political life of the surrounding localities, but he also played a pivotal role in shaping the direction in which Eveleigh's workplace culture developed. He was a key witness on behalf of railway and engineering workers during the hearings of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the possibility of locomotive manufacture by state enterprises, which were held between 19 February and 14 March 1904 and which recommended that manufacturing should be conducted at Eveleigh." A couple of months later, on 10 May, McGowen launched the state Party's election campaign at the Redfem Town Hall. His popularity among locals was evident in the large numbers of men and women who packed the hall and the hundreds who gathered on the street because they could not gain entry. Taksa • labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops

At the 1904 election, the Labor Party's overall vote increased from just under 19 per cent, obtained in the 1901 election, to 23 percent and 25 Labor politicians became Members of the NSW Parliament. This number increased further in 1907 and in 1910 the first state Labor Government was fonned with McGowen as Premier." Two years later, the McGowen Government appointed a Royal Commission, as had been requested by Eveleigh's mechanics, into the comparatively greater number of orders for locomotives that were being placed with a private finn. Its finding that 'the locomotive requirements of the state railways could be fully met by the state railway works', was soon followed by the necessary extensions and alterations to the site.60 This is not to suggest that McGowen was always responsive to railway workers or that his relations with railway unions were always hannonious. They were not. Rather, this political outcome provides a good example of how workers harnessed personal and labour movement connections and political practices to pursue their own goals. For even when railway workers were dissatisfied with the McGowen Goverrunent for not enforcing the ARTSA's demand for an 8/~ minimum wage in 1911, they met with McGowen to personally promote their cause.61 McGowen was not the only politician to be supported by overlapping neighbourhood, industrial and political networks that operated in the working class communities in and around the Eveleigh railway workshops. Nor was his political career the oniy one to be enhanced by speaking at local meetings. These cultural resources were equally importantfor WilliamJohn McKell, who worked at Eveleigh between 1913 and 1914. Having become an active member of the Boilermakers' Society earlier, during his apprenticeship, he then represented it at the Labor Council and the Eight Hour Committee and he became the Assistant Secretary between 1915 and 1917. In the 1917 state election he received Labor's endorsement as the Member for Redfern, a seat he won with over 66 per cent of the vote. This marked the start of a long and illustrious political career." Like McGowen, McKell had an important affect on the working class communities surrounding Eveleigh. Stan Jones recalled when McKell initially stood for Parliament in 1917 because the latter addressed a night-time meeting in Wells Street, from the Jones family's kitchen table, which he said created great excitement in the neighbourhood. McKell's popularity owed a lot to the fact that he 'kept his feet on the ground in Redfern' by living there for 40 years, from 1904 and maintaining an open house for his constituents.63 Street meetings and other sorts of social interaction in the neighbourhood were certainiy important in enhancing the careers of those who became politicians before 1918. They also politicised others, who subsequently came to represent working people. Edward John Ward provides a good case in point. The son of a 'staunch supporter of the Labor Party' who was employed on the tramways, Ward gained his first full-time job at Eveleigh in 1915, making and repairing tarpaulins. Here he immediately organised the other young boys in a protest strike against the existing working conditions. But outside of working hours, he was 'a keen listener at street~ corner political meetings'. Two years earlier, Ward attended his first major protest meetings at Trades Hall over the goverrunent's deportation of Paul Freeman, for allegedly having made subversive statements. Later, while working at Eveleigh, he attended election rallies in the surrounding districts, particularly if the speaker was opposed to Labor. In such cases he would organise 'other boys of the neighbourhood' Labour History. Number 79 • November 2000 to disrupt the meeting. Having accomplished this end, he would 'jump on a box' and reopen it on behalf of the Labor Party, even though at that stage he was too young to be a member.64 Cultural practices, such as street meetings and processions, not only built on associations formed in the neighbourhood, the workplace and through labour movement institutions but also on family, religion and recreational networks, all of which had their own spatial dimensions.

The Heart of Working Class Sydney Eveleigh formed the hub of a variegated community that was composed of people who lived in the suburbs that encircled it and that revolved around shared employment, occupation, kinship, ethnicity and religion, home and neighbourhood. By 1891, the demographic profile of these inner city suburbs was distinctly working class and their perceived status remained consistently low until the 19705. The extensive swamps that dominated these localities began attracting industry during the 18605 and industry and cheap land encouraged sub-division and housing for workers. In Camperdown and Darlington, 'the streets were narrow and the terraces mean', while in Newtown, Redfem, Waterloo and Alexandria, slum housing had existed from the 1870s. Between 1871 and 1891, population density in these suburbs doubled. In Alexandria, blue collar workers reached 74 per cent of the suburb's workforce during this period, while the population density per acre to the east, in Redfem, increased from over 14 per cent in 1871 to nearly 47 per cent in 1891. In Darlington, it increased from 25 per cent to almost 62 per cent in the same period. As Fitzgerald points out, these figures provide an indication of an increasing degree of overcrowding.6S Eveleigh grew rapidly to become one of ihe largest enterprises in the heart of inner-city Sydney. In 1890 The Echo claimed that the opening of these workshops had 'caused many of the railway workmen to take up residence' in this suburb so that they formed a large proportion of its occupants." Kinship provided an important link between Eveleigh and the surrounding localities. Prior to his own employment at EveJeigh in 1906, J.J. Cahill's father, Thomas, worked there during the late nineteenth century. Stan Jones followed his grandfather, father, uncles and cousins into the workshops in 1925. A similar pattern occurred among Eveleigh's female employees during this period. In 1892, John Powys was joined at Eveleigh by his wife Caroline Ann Powys and his eldest son. A number of years later, another son and daughter, joined this family group, as did two of their cousins. Likewise, Jane McDoughall worked there with her daughter and two sons, and Bridget Maloney worked alongSide her daughter." These family networks affected the neighbourhoods around Eveleigh. Again, Stan Jones provides a good case in point. Like his father, Jones was born in Redfem where he lived with his family in Wells Street. His aunt lived next door, while his grandparents and other members of his extended family lived almost immediately behind his home in Eveleigh Street. This family grouping was typical of the area.68 Experiences in the family and the home influenced pOlitical identity and participation. Eddie Ward's political attitudes, like those of Alice Doyle, Stan Jones, and Edna Ryan, were fonned in the home as much as on the streets and at work. According to his biographer, Ward jOined the Surry Hills Branch of the Labor Party Taksa· Labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops 25 in 1915 at the age of 16, mainly due to the influence of Miss Mary Beddie, who was a boarder in his parentsl house. In Spratt's view, it was Beddie's intense interest in politics and her active involvement with the ALP women's organising committee, that provided the impetus for Ward's own political engagement, although his father's influence cannot be discounted. In the 1920s Ward continued his industrial and political activities. He was arrested for picketing during the 1928 timber workers strike and in that year too he was elected secretary of his branch of the Labor Party, becoming its president in 1929. Between 1930 and 1931 he was an Alderman on the Sydney City Council and in 1931 he became the Federal Member for East Sydney, a position he retained until the 1960s.69 Eveleigh provided a lived space in which a multiplicity of social relationships and networks, that were both internal and external to it, overlapped. Recruitment policies that encouraged the employment of family groupings, limited transport services that encouraged employees to live in close proximity to the works and dense occupation in the surrounding localities, fostered a high degree of infonnal interaction among neighbours. As Jones put it, 'people knew each other and people used to fraternise as neighbours ... there was no question in those days of anyone being in need and not being helped by a neighbour ... if anyone was sick ... someone would make a bowl of soup' for them. Such daily interactions created real social connections from which workers derived notions of social obligation and an impression of social cohesion and mutual interests.70 Many who lived and worked in the districts around Eveleigh shared more than just common employment. In 1891, around 65 per cent of the inhabitants of each of the suburbs of Alexandria, Macdonaldtown, Red.fem and Waterloo, and just over 71 per cent of Darlington residents, were Protestant. And while Catholics were not as numerous, they still made up a substantial proportion of these suburbs, with nearly 24 per cent in Alexandria, nearly 25 per cent in Darlington, just over 21 per cent in Macdonaldtown and nearly 28 per cent in both Redfem and Waterloo, figures that were greater than the metropolitan average?l The cohort of Eveleigh employees who became Labor politicians reflects this religious profile. Of the 25,12 were Catholic. As well, both parents of J.J. Cahill and James Leo Geraghty were Irish immigrants, as were A.T. Powell's mother, R.B. Marsh's father, and E.J. Ward's maternal grandparents." These men formed part of the growing numbers of Cafuolics who represented Labor in Parliament after the turn of the century. While the first Members elected in NSW in 1891 were all Protestants and members of this faith continued to be the best represented among the ranks of Labor politicians, Catholics won eight of the 25 seats obtained by Labor in the 1904 election, and when Labor won the 1910 state election, this number increased to 16. Following the Labor Party split over conscription in 1916, this trend was confirmed. At the 1917 elections, the number of Catholics increased to 18 out of 33 or 54 per cent. According to Celia Hamilton, the growing alignment between Irish-Catholics and the state Labor Party had an important affect on Labor'selectoral fortunes. Whereas just over 28 per cent of seats gained by Labor in the 1907 election was in electorates with above average concentration of Catholics, three years later this figure had increased to over 71 per cent." Religious identity and affiliations were important in the localities around Eveleigh. Even though Stan Jones described his family as 'careless' Catholics, he Labour History. Number 79 • November 2000 stressed that churches were important in 'bringing people together', not just for religious but also for recreational activities. Religion provided one of a number of cultural buildings blocks because it played an important part in creating social and community networks. One Anglican church in Redfem was described as 'a meeting place' because it hosted dances and a football club." Church-based activities formalised religious differences. Stan ) ones recalled 'verbal interchanges between the girls and boys' who attended the public or Catholic Schools' in Redfem and Surry Hills. But he stressed that while 'there was always a certain amount of sectarianism ... it wasn't sharp'. As McCalman noted, iwhen we step outside the arena of public conflict into the private world' of working class community, 'we find sectarianism much softened. Many people did not take the sectarian conflict seriously'. Some politicians actively chose to minimise religious differences in the everyday life of their localities by emphasising broader affiliations. McGowen fonned a district cricket competition to replace the existing 'exclusive' clubs, while McKell refused to aclcnowledge sectarianism. In talking about the district football club, he stressed that 'it didn't matter whether you were Protestant or Catholic or Calathumpian as long as you could play football: John Mongan, whose maternal grandparents were both Irish immigrants, whose parents were both Catholic, who went to a local Catholic School where all the Brothers were Irish, and to Church every Sunday with his mother and siblings, actively opposed religious differences. He left the Hibernian Lodge as soon as he was old enough and after he joined the railways as an apprentice he avoided all religious associations that existed in the organisation. As he told his wife's father, who he described as 'a red hot Orangeman':

Now you silly old so and so, you should have more brains than that. There is only one thing I do agree with the Commos. He said 'What's that?' I said, With what Lenin said ... Religion is the opium of the people."

A range of cultural practices helped to play down religious, as well as other differences. Shared recreational activities that brought together family members, neighbours and workmates not only relied on the local churches but also workplace, occupational and labour movement networks. Union and workshop committee picnics were a major event in the social calendars of workshop employees. As well, during the early 19305 the ARU formed football and cricket associations, and organised competitions between teams from Eveleigh and other branches." Through their involvements with local sporting activities and clubs, Eveleigh's more prominent employees cemented their ties with the local community. McGowen was not only involved with the district cricket competition but he also played bowls in Redfern Park every Saturday afternoon. McKell participated in amateur boxing and gradefootball before he was elected to Parliament in 1917 and in 1925 he was elected Vice-President of the South Sydney Rugby League Oub. Other Labor politicians who were active in the local rugby fratenity included W.). Long, a boilermaker at Eveleigh between 1915 and 1917, and 1920 and 1928, prior to his election to the Federal Parliament in the latter year, G.W.H. Noble, who was a gasfitter at Eveleigh between 1908 and 1941 before becoming the state member for Redfem in 1947, and Eddie Ward, who played with the Waterloo and Redfem teams." Taksa • Labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops

Hotels in Eveleigh's immediate vicinity provided another source of recreation for Eveleigh employees during lunch-times, after work and on weekends. To an extent, this pursuit reinforced gender differences and particular occupational networks among those who worked together in the discrete sections of the workshops. The pubs in Alexandria and Waterloo were frequented by those from the foundry and running sheds, while the locomotive shop employees drank at the pubs in the heart of Redfem, and the carriage shop employees drank at the pubs in Darlington. At the same time, however, socialising at hotels was not restricted to Eveleigh workers and the pubs themselves helped to overcome gender and occupational divisions by organising picnics and cricket and quoit competitions with teams from other pubs.78 The local hotels also provided an important venue for meetings organised by labour movement organisations, and together with other locally~based social activities, they helped to forge connections between employment, community activities, industrial mobilisation and political behaviour. During the 19505 Communist Party meetings were held in a number of Redfem pubs. In other words, venues of this sort created a bridge between 'daily spontaneous contacts between neighbours' and more fonnal interactions that were associated with the workplace and the labour movement.79 Those Eveleigh workers who joined the ranks of the Parliamentary Labor Party, illustrate Scatesl point that working class citizenship 'was enmeshed in widersodal networks, the shuctures of the workplace and community, the family and the street: However, their involvement in labour's political culture was also shaped by the experience of class shuggle. The NSW General Strike of 1917 provided one such experience for many Eveleigh employees, like Eddie Ward, j.j. Cahill, w.j. Long, j.W.H. Noble, W.T. Padgen W.T.j. Murray and CH. Matthews, all of whom were sacked from Eveleigh.80 Ritualised public interaction among working-class people in the local hotels and halls and on the streets relied on and also upheld a perception of community based on class experiences, identity and interests. Such cultural practices were critical in linking familYI neighbourhood, workplace and occupational networks and associations with labour movement organisations. While branches of the Labor Party used such meetings to ensure electoral support, industrial organisations fostered them to support collective actionl and also to promote class consciousness. At Eveleigh, they formed an important part of workplace culture.

Taking it to the Streets: Cultural Practices and Industrial Activism at Eveleigh Early industrial meetings were generally held at the entry gates to the workshops. Although most of these meetings addressed sectional interests, increasingly they were used to promote class identification. In April 1914, the Workers' Industrial Union of Australia held three lunch-time meetings at the Boundary Street gate. And in 19191 its organiser1 W.R. Corcoranl addressed more meetings there in order tc s1 promote unity between skilled and unskilled workers. Subsequently, in 19251 thi~ same goal was pursued by the ARU. By September 1926, such meetings were being held on a weekly basis, an escalation that accompanied the fonnation of rank-and· file workshop committees. Through these bodies Eveleigh stalwarts like Alan Wilsor and Stan jones, both of who had personally been affected by the General Strike OJ labour History. Number 79 • November 2000

1917 and both of who were communists, fought against the strikebreakers' unions and the religious, occupational, union and administrative differences that divided Eveleigh employees and hindered the emergence of class consciousness.82 While organisers for the Ironworkers Union addressed members at Eveleigh's gates during 1928 to promote the benefits of union membership, the ARU and the shop committees pursued the same ends by promoting lunch-hour meetings inside the workshops. Such activities were designed to re-establish the workplace culture that had existed before the 1917 strike. Unlike union branch meetings, which often promoted section identities and interests, those organised by the shop committees actively sought to overcome differences. With the aid of the Labor Council, they brought together various unions to pursue shared goals, such as the elimination of management-approved unions and the card system that had sparked the NSW General Strike. They also mobilised political networks. Those who attended one such meeting in 1931 demanded that the recently re-elected Lang Labor Government 'take immediate steps' to make the system illegal. A year later, Lang fulfilled their demands.83 Such meetings also involved struggles over space inside Eveleigh. Those who worked in the Stores met in their meal-room. And it was here in 1926 that conflict erupted when management opposed such practices on railway property. This encounter marked the first of many efforts by management to control such meetings, and also the workers insistence on their right to hold them." According to Stan jones, management opposed meetings inside the Carriage and Wagon shops because the carriage shop committee that organised them had close links with the Labor Council and included workers from numerous occupations and unions. The very fact that these committees relied on and reinforced industrial networks that extended beyond the workshops and promoted class, as opposed to sectional identities and interests, made them political in the eyes of the Railway Commissioners, who formally prohibited their meetings on 11 March 1930." This ban did not stop meetings from being held. Throughout the 1930s, despite conflicts between and within unions represented in the workshops, joint meetings were organised by the ARU, the AEU and the Ironworkers Association. As the ARU's paper, The Railroad, put it in 1935, the shop committees and their meetings broke down differences that divided workers.86 They brought workers into contact with each other on a regular basis and provided an important system of communication that reinforced traditional working class cultural practices. Conflict with management led workers to renegotiate the ground on which they engaged in struggle. In 1938, when the Railway Commissioners prohibited the workers' morning tea-break, they defended their '30-year-old custom' by calling a large meeting in the carriage and wagon works. But instead of staying there, 'a flood of men poured on Wilson Street gate', where shop committee delegates and also representatives from the ARU, the AEU and the Ironworkers addressed employees on the 'Dictatorship In Our Midst'. Throughout the ensuing decades Eveleigh workers gathered at the gates to consider not just their own sectional interests but also the plight of other workers. 'Solidarity' meetings were held during the miners' lock out of 1929, the Seamens' dispute of 1936 and the strike of young female rubber workers employed by Dunlop-Perdriau in 1939.'7 These mass meetings inside Eveleigh's gates, as well as those held on its boundaries, brought workers together, enabled them to resistthe state's power and Taksa • Labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops 29 bureaucratic authority and to receive information about workers' experiences elsewhere. By participating in these activities they manifested their bonds with other working class people and articulated their shared meanings and values. In this way Eveleigh provided a system of communication that linked the workplace to the institutions of the labour movement and labour politics, one that was underpinned by cultural ties that formed in working class communities and traditional practices that were enacted in the local streets, halls and hotels. Through such practices working class people pursued their collective interests. To the extent that they involved struggles with railway management Or employers more generally, and efforts to increase working class representation in politics or to influence Lahor politicians, they demonstrate that labour culture was shaped by broader relations of power and relied on a process of negotiation that was designed to increase working class power. In this sense, the culture of those who worked at and/or lived. around Eveleigh involved a whole way of life and a whole way of conflict.

Conclusion Cultural life at Eveleigh, as in the surrounding localities, was by its very nature political. Those Eveleigh employees who became Labor leaders were tied to the workshops and the local working class communities by occupational, neighbourhood, religious, recreational and labour movement networks. These were also significant for their less prominent constituents, who participated in local political forums and voted for Labor politicians as a way of expressing their desire for a better quality of life. Public meetings in the neighbourhoods around Eveleigh, like the mass meetings held on the workshops' boundaries, enabled both groups to articulate and communicate their shared values and created an impression of a common identity that drew on, co-existed with and at times subsumed, differences based on gender, ethnicity, religion and occupation. By focusing on these meetings, this article has shown how ritualised. practices in one place influenced specific patterns of communication and participation among working class people, and the way such patterns, in turn, shaped their labour culture and politics.

Endnotes

I would like to thank the Australia Research Council for providing the funds for this research, Louella Macarthy, Jane Stevens, Liala Ellmoos and Perry McIntyre for helping me locate many of the sources used, and the numerous retired Eveleigh employees who allowed me to interview them. Finally, I would like to thank the three anonymous referees, whose comments and suggestions helped me refine the treatment presented here. 1. E. Olssen and J. Breciler, The Power of Shop Culture: The Labour Process in the New Zealand Railway Workshops, 1890-1930', International Review of Social History, vol. 37, 1992, pp. 350-51. 2. D.K. Drummond, Crewe: Railway Town, Company and People, 1840-1914, Scalar Press, Aldershot, 1995, p. 13; J. Cattell and K. Falconer, Swindon: The Legacy of A Railway Town, HMSO, London. 1995, pp. 10-15; E. 01ssen. Building the New World: Work, Po/iticsand Society in Caversham, 18805-19205, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1995; A. Sharpe, Pictorial History Newtown, Kingsclear Books, Alexandria, 1999. It is worthwhile noting that in Glynn's view 'in Australia, urbanisation gave rise to manufacturing - contrary to the situation in Britain and other countries'. 5. Glynn. Urbanisation in Australian History, 1788-1900, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1970, p. 17. 3. S. Macintyre, Utlle Moscows: Communism and Working-Class Militancy in Inter-War Britain, Croom Helm, London, 1980;J. Mc.Calman, Struggletown: Public and Private Ufe in Richmond, 1900-1965, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1984; K Tsokhas, 'Proletarian Cultures', Meanjin, vol. 44, no. 2, 1985, pp. 170, 174-5, 171; B. Scates, A New Australia: Citizenship, Radicalism and the New Republic, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1997, p. S. Labour History. Number 79 • November 2000

4. R. Samuel, 'People's History', in R. Samuel (ed.t Prop!e's History and Socialist Theory, RouUedge & Kegan Paul, London.. 1981, pp. xv-xxxix; A Round Table: 'tabor, Historical Pessimism. and Hegemony', The Journal of American History, val. 75, no. 1, 1988, pp. 115-161; C.W.E. Bigsby (ed.), Approaches to Popular Culture, Edward Amold, London, 1976. 5. Scates, A New Australia, pp. 8-n. 6. Scates, ibid., pp. 203-4. 7. L Layman.. 'labour History in the Making: The Australian Scene in the 1980s and Directions (or the 1990s', in J.E. Martin and K Tay tar (eds), Culture and the Labour Movement, The Dunmore Press, Palmerston North. 1991, pp. 33-49, p. 41; S. Garton.. 'What Have We Done? Labour History, Social History, Cultural History', in T.lrving (ed.), Challenges to Labour History, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1994, pp. 52-7. 8. G. Patrnore, 'Community and Australian Labour History', in T. trYing (eel.), Challenges to lAbour History, pp. 178-184; L. Taksa, 'Uke a Bicycle, Forever Teetering between Individualism and. Collectivism: Considering Community in Relation to labour History', Labour History, vol. 78, 2000, pp. 7-32. Also see other articles in the thematic section of this volume of Labour History. 9. E. Hobsbawm, On History, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1997, p. 276. 10. N. Kirk, Change, Continuity and Class: Labour in British Society, 18~1920, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1998, p. 155. 11. Ibid., p. 215. 12. Although I recognise that respectability provided. an important source of distinction between working class people, it is beyond the scope of the paper to consider its implications. See further, J. McCalman, 'Oass and Respectability in a Working-Class Suburb: Richmond Victoria, Before the Great War', Historical Studies, vol. 20, no. 78, 1982, pp. 90--103; E. Ross, 'Not the Sort that Would Sit on the Doorstep: Respectability in ?re·World War I London Neighborhoods', Internationall.abor and Working Class History, no. 27, 1985, pp. 39--59. 13. L. Heerma van Voss and F. van Holthoon, 'Introduction: Popular Culture, Local Culture, Working Class Culture. Problems of Definition and Comparison', in L. van Voss and F. van Holthoon (eds), Working Class and Popular Culture, p. 9; R. Gable (ed.), Raymond Williams, Resources of Hope Culture, Democracy, Socialism, Verso, London. 1989, p. 4; R. Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin. Harmondsworth, 1%1, pp. 312-14; E.P. Thompson, The Mlzking Of the English Working Class, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1968, pp. 462-3; R Williams, The Long Revolution, Penguin, Harmondsworth, l%S,originally published 1961, p. 57. 14. G.M. Sider, The Ties that Bind: Culture and Agriculture, Property and Propriety in the Newfoundland Village Fishery', Social History, vol. 5, no. 1, 1980, pp. 1-2. 15. Sider, ibid., pp. 15--16; J. Rickard, 'Cultural History: The 'High' and the 'Popular", Australian Cultural History, no. 5, 1986, p. 41. 16. van Voss and van Holthoon. 1ntroduction: Popular Culture', pp. 10-11; P. Burke, 'The "Discovery" of Popular Culture', and S. Hall, 'Notes on Deconstructing The Popular", in Samuel (eel.), Prople's History, pp. 221-25, and pp. 227, 232-35. 17. E. Yea, 'Phases in the History of Popular Culture and Power Relations in Britain, 1789 to the Present', in van Voss and van Holthoon (eds), Working Class and Popular Culture, p. 136. 18. S. Lukes, Puwer: A RAdical View, Macmillan. London. 1974, pp. 26--33. 19. S. Pile, 'Introduction: opposition, political identities and spaces of resistance', in S. Pile and M. Keith (eds), Geographies ofResislance, RoutIed.ge, London, 1997, pp. 1-2, 16,24. 20. R. Blackburn, 'Introduction', in Gable (ed.), Raymond Williams, p. x; M. Keith & S. Pile (eds), Place and the Politics of Identity, Routledge, London. 1993; Pile and Keith (eds), Grographies of Resistance; M. Denning, The Cultural Front; the l.abouring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century, Verso, London and New York, 1997. 21. Williams, 'Culture is Ordinary, 1958', Williams, 'Communications and Community, 1%1', Williams, The Idea of Common Culture, 1968', in Gable (ed.), Raymond WilIiams, pp. 4, 8, 21, 32-33, 36-38. 22. Williams, 'Communications and Community. p. 22. 23. Yea, 'Phases in the History of Popular Culture', pp. 137-145; M. du Bois Reymond and A. E.M. Jonker, The City's Public Space and Urban Childhood', in van Voss and van Holthoon (eds), Working Class and Popular Culture, pp. 43--58; E. Ross, 'Survival Networks: Women's Neighbourhood Sharing in London Before World War 1', History Workshop, no. 15, 1983, p. 4; E. Ross, 'Fierce Questions and Taunts: Married Life in Working-Class London" 1870-1914', Feminist Studies, vol. 8, no. 3, 1982; A. May, 'Structures with Actors: AnApproach to the Historical Experience of theSt:reet in Melbourne', Melbourne Historical Journal, vol. 18, 1987, pp. 16-17; A. Brown-May, Melbourne Street Ufe, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Kew, 1998. 24. May, 'Structures with Actors', p. 17. 25. Ross, 'Survival Networks', pp. 5, 8-9; Reymond and Jonker, 'The City's Public Space', pp. 43, 46--8; J. Schlumbohm,. 'Traditional Collectivity and Modem Individuality: Some Questions and Suggestions for the Historical Study ofSocialization The Examples of the German Lower and Upper Bourgeaisies around 1800', Social History, vol. 5, no. 1, 1980, pp. 84-6; M. Indian, 'Formalisation of Urban Leisure', in R. Cashman and M. McKeman (eels), Sport, Money, Morality and the Media, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1981, pp. 273--4, 278-81. Taksa • Labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops I

26. Interviews by L Taksa with S. lanes on 8 September 1983; J. Mongan on 19 March 1987; E. Ryan on 19 October 1987 on behalf of the NSW Bicentennial Oral History Project; J. Willis on 5 February 1996 for the Eveleigh Social History project. 27. Interview with A. Doyle conducted by L Taksa on behalf of the NSW Bicentermial Oral History Project on2S May 1987. 28. Interview with N. Edwards conducted by L Taksa on 20 August 1987 on behalf of the NSW 8icentennial Oral History Project. 29. Doyle interview. 30. Mongan interview. 31. Sider, The Ties that Bind', pp. 1-2. 32. J. GUM. Along Parallel Lines: A History of the Railways of New South Wales, 18SCJ..1986, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne 1989, pp. 3~; K. Buckley and T. Wheelwright, No PaTadise fM Workers: Capitalism and the Common People in Australia, 1788-1914, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1988, p. 104; Annual Report (AR) of the Commissioner For Railways for the Year 1881, NSW State Rail Authority Archives (SRAA), R8\3, pp. 11-12, pp. 29·31; AR for 1882, SRAA, RS\4, pp.12·13; AR for 1898, inclucting Chief Mechanical Engineer's Report, SRAA R9/10, p. 7, p. 14; The Origin and Growth of Eveleigh', The Staff, 18 February 1930, pp. 105-107; The New Erecting Shops, Eveleigh', The New South Wales RIlilway Budget, 20 June 1898, p. 172 (henceforth Budget); The Railway WorkshOps', and The Locomotive Shops at Eveleigh', Budget, 211u1y 1900, p. 226 and p. 239, respectively; The Carriage and Wagon Shops at Eveleigh', Budget, 21 August 1900, p. 250; 'Extension of the Eveleigh Railway Workshops', Budget, 1 August, 1903, p. 289. 33. R Markey, The Mtlkingof the l.Jzbor Party in New South Wales, 1880-1900, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1988, pp. 99-103; le. Docherty, The Rise of Railway Unionism: A Study of NSW and Victoria c. 188().. 1905, unpublished Masters thesis, Australian National University, 1973, pp. 6-59; 'The Locomotive Shops', p. 239; W. Blacket, Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry as to Whether the Supply of Locomotives is Met/unte far Traffic Purposes and if Inadequate, to Inquire into tlu! CAuses and Reasons of such Inadequacy, and as to how far Future Locomotive R.e4uiTements aln be met at Eveleigh Warks, Government Printer, Sydney, 1912, pp. 6-10, p. 13; D. Burke,Mtln of Steam: E.E. Lucy - A Gentleltuzn Engineer in the GTtilt Days of the Iron Horse, Iron Horse Press, Sydney, 1986, p. 46. 34. K Buckley, The Amalgamated Engineers in Australia, 1852·1920, Department of Economic History, Canberra, 1970, pp. 15-16; L Taksa, 'Sodal and Oral History', in Godden Mackay Pty. Ud., E-oeleigh Workshbps Mtll11lgement Plan for Moveable Items and Sodal History, voL 2, Sydney, July 1996; Government Gazette Employee Usts, 1887·1939, SRAA; Railway Persormel Cards, State Records Office of NSW (SRO), Series: 11/16552 to 11/16745, and SRAA. One hundred and twenty--seven women have been identified from the Government Gazette lists between 1887 and 1939. Over 60 female munitions workers and 10 industrial nurses have been identified from SRA Personnel Cards. Information on women clerks, industrial nurses, canteen workers, train cleaners, language teachers and apprentices have been obtained from oral sources and SRA personnel records. Interview with 1. Hitchen conducted on 15 October 1996; Interview with A. Pabick conducted by L Taksa on 5 January 1999; Interview with E. WheatIey conducted by L. Taksa on 28 September 1999; Interview with P. Holdorf conducted by L. Taksa on 17 May 1999; Genealogical reconstructions performed by P. McIntyre, 1999 on the Powys, McDoughall and Breen families using SRA Personnel Cards for Employees born before 1900, SRO and Births, Deaths and Marriage Records. 35. G.E. Patmore, A History of Industrial Relations in the NSW Government Railways: 1855-1929, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 1985, pp. 22·3, 26, 51, 54--6, 64-70, 21()'12; Eveleigh Workers' Data Base, compiled with assistance from an Australian Research Council, Strategic Partnerships with Industry - Research and Training (SPIRT) grant, using Government Gazette Employee Lists published every three years from 1887, held by the SRAA. 36. Mr Justice Curlewis, Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Effects of the Workings of the System known as the Job and Time CArds System introduced into the Tramways and RJ1ilways Workshops of the RIlilways Commissioners, NSW Parliamentary Papers, vol. 5-6, 1918, p. 57, p. 65; M. Heam,. Working lives: A History of the Australian RIlilways Union (NSW Branch), Hale & lremonger, Sydney, 1990, p. 31; G. E. Patmore, 'The Origins of the National Union of Railwaymen', Labour History, no. 43, 1982, pp. .w. 52. 37. Interview with B. Dunnett conducted by J. Kent on 10 May 1996. 38. Interview with H. AIexanderconducted by J. Kent on 15 April 19%. 39. Willis, interview. 40. Patmore, 'A History' ,chapter four, pp. 305-306, 3J5.335,.338-340; e. McAllister, T. Roberts,G. Nutt, T.H. Woodroffe, W. Thow;, Royal Commission of Inquiry Into the Practicability of the Construction of Locomotives by the Government, qr by Private Enterprise, in this State, Government Printer, Sydney, 1904, SRAA, R 158/10, pp. 12-17; L Taksa, 'Defence not Defiance: Social Protest and the NSW General Strike of 1917', l.Jzbour History, no. 60, 1991, pp. 16-33. 41. The largest unions included the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AUE), the Australasian Society of Engineers (ASE), the Australian Railways Union (ARU), the Federated Ironworkers Association (RA). and the Boilennakers Sodety. After its deregistration in 1917, the Amalgamated Railway and Tramway Service Association was reformed as the ARU, which was registered under the NSW labour History. Number 79 • November 2000

Industrial Arbitration Act on 30 December 1920. S. lones, 'Eveleigh - The Heart Of The Transport System', Daily News: Feature for Transport Workers, 19 January, 1939; A. WJ.lsoIl. The Railway Shop Committees' Struggle', Fifty Years of Struggle, Vol. 1, pp. 45-6; A WLlson,. •Australia's First Shop Committees', The Modem Unionist. June 1971, pp. 39-40; HeaIl\ Working lives, p. 33. 42. Schwager Brooks, EveJeigh Precinct Conservation Policy, p. 1; NSW State Heritage Inventory, http:// www.heritage.nsw.gov.au 43. The sources are conclusive for all but three of the following politicians: W. Ainsworth, }.A. Bodkin.. J.J. Cahill, W.]. Carlton. c.]. Danahey, RogerDegen, J.L. Geraghty, E.]. Hanison. M.L. Hunter, N.]. Keams, W.]. Long.. RB. Marsh, CH. Matthews,j.5.T. McGowen. W.]. McKell, j. McNeil, J.A. Mulvihill, W.T. Murray,G.W.H. Noble, W.T. Padgen.A.T. (Spence) Powell, W.M. Rigby, CS. Sinclair, E.]. Ward, SAL. Wyatt. The three in doubt include: Powell, Rigby, and Sinclair. H. Radi, P. Spearritt and E. Hinton (eds), Biographical Register of the New South Wales Parliament, 1801-1970, Australian National University (ANU) Press, Canberra, 1979; CN. Connolly, Biographical Register of the New South Wales Parliament, 1856-1901,ANU Press, Canberra, 1983; J. Rydon, A Biographical Register of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1901-1972, ANU Press, Canberra, 1975; Railway Personnel Cards, SRO and SRAA; Government Gazette Employee Lists. 44. 'Mass Rally of Eveleigh Railway Workers Listen to an Election Speech fromJack lang at Redfem, August 22, 1934', Sydney: At Work and Play Plwtographic Collection, Still 00354, Mitchell Library (ML), Sydney; 'They will Vote For labor To-morrow, photograph of Eveleigh workers listening to an election speech by J.H. Scullin,. Leader of the Federal Labor Party, Barrier Daily Truth, 16 November 1928. Thanks to J. Shields for drawing my attention to the latter source. 45. Patmore, 'A History', pp. 66-9; Markey, The Making, pp. 100, 104, 137, 197-9. 46. Patmore, ibid, pp. 4, 8, 18-19, 21, 24-5, 43-4; P. Loveday, 'New South Wales', in O.J. Murphy (ed.), LAbor in Politics: the State LAbor Parties in Australia, 1880-1920, University of Queensland Press, 51. LuOa, 1975, pp. 16-20; Photograph: 'The Railway Workers' Section of the Eight Hour Day March, 1873', Australian Sketcher, 1873, National Library of Australia; Buckley, The Amalgamated Engineers, pp. 31, 51, 56, 64-5; Markey, The Making, pp. 137, 139-40, 153, 212; R. Markey, In Case of Oppression: The Lifeand Times of the lAbor Council of New South Wales, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1994, pp. 16, 27, 100, 115. 47. Taksa, 'Social and Oral History', p. 56; 'Family Generations in Railway Employment', NSW Rtzilway and Tramway Magazine, December 1917, p. 74; M. Klein, Unfinished Business: The Railroad in American life, University Press of New England, Hanover, 1994, p. 15; G.R. Poole and D.J. Young (eds), R.E. (Lefty) Morgan,. Workers' Control on the Rtzilroad: A Practical Example "Right Under Your Nose",' S1. John's Canadian Committee on labour History, St. John's, 1994, p. 51; Drummond, Crewe, pp. 75, 123; A. Williams, life in a Rtzilway Factory, Alan Sutton,. Gloucester, 1984; F. McKenna, 'Victorian Railway Workers', History Workshop, no. 1, Spring 1976, pp. 26-73; F. McKenna, The Railway Workers, 1840-1970, Faber and Faber, London, 1980;Olssen. Building the New World, p. 133; Willis, Jones, Holdon, interviews; Interview with J. Barnes conducted by L. Taksa, 16 March 1998; Interview with B. Rhymes conducted by L. Taksa on 5 June 1998; Genealogical and oral sources referred to in note 34. 48. Patmore, 'A History', pp. 66-9; Markey, The Making, p. 137. 49. R.M. Audley, '&hey William Francis (1857-1913)', in G. Serle (ed.), Australian Dicti01Ulry of Biography, volll, 1891-1939, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1988, pp. 535-6; S. Fitzgerald, Rising Damp, Sydney, 1870-90, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1987, pp. 21, 34. w. Originally a blacksmith, Hoyle joined the railways in 1876. He helped to form the Railway and Tramway Employees Association and in 1885 he became its President. In 1890 he was dismissed from the railways and the following year he won a Redfem seat, alongSide Schey, both of who later joined the labor Party. Hoyle continued to represent Redfem until 1894 and although he was defeated the following year, he subsequently represented Suny Hills between 1910 and 1917. Return of Persons employed in the Permanent Way Branch on 31 December, 1887, Goverrunent Gazette Employee List, SRAA, p. 41; Radi, Spearritt and Hinton (eds), Biographical Register, p. 138; G. Black, A History of the NSW LAbcr Party From Conception until 1917,Sydney, vol. 5, no date, p. 4. 51. Danahey was a fitter at Eveleigh between 1884 and 1891, and was closely associated with the formation of the Australasian Society of Engineers. When he was returned for the seat of Canterbury in the 1891 election, he 'styled' himself as a labor Member. He attended the first annual Labor Party Conference in November 1893, as a trade union representative and he voted for the labor Platform. Although he was one of the 'pioneers of political laborism' in NSW, Danahey cut his ties with the labour movement in 1898. Black, A History, vol. 2, pp. 12, 24, 31, 35, 44, vol. 7, p. 9; Connolly, Biographical Register, p. 75; Loveday, 'New South Wales', p. 107; Hansard Index to Speeches, Sessions 1891-92, 1892-93, 1894. I would like to extend my thanks to O. Oune, Manager, Research, NSW Parliamentary Library for providing me with the last reference. 52. B. Nairn, 'McGowen.. James Sinclair Taylor (1855-1922)', in B. Nairn and G. Serle (eds), Australian Dictiol1Jlry of Biography, vol. 10, 1891-1939, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1986, p. 273; R. McMullin,. The Light on the Hill: The Australian LAbor Party, 1891-1991, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1991, pp. 12,56; Black, A History, vol. 5, p. 4, vo!. 3, p. 13, vol. 4, pp. 8-9.

53. Markey, In Case of Oppression, p. 5; Patmore, i A History', pp. 52-63; Scates, A New Australia, pp. 3, 9, 85. Taksa. Labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops 33

54. B. Nairn, 'The 1916-17 Labor Party Crisis in New South Wales and the Advent ofW.J. McKell', lAbour History. no. 16, 1969, p. 3; Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), 12 August 1901, p. 5; 'Railway and Tramway Association', Budget, 21 August 1901, p. 278. 55. Worker, 16 March 1901, 27 Apri11901. 56. Worker, 2 April 1904, p. 4; Report of the Rayal Commission on Strikes, 1891, SRAA, RlSS/4, Literary Appendix, p. 155, Item 30; The People, 8 June 1901- 57. The Worker, 10 June 1905, p. 6; 19 July 1905, p. 6. 58. McAllister, Roberts, Nun, Woodroffe, Thaw, Royal Commission, pp. 1-8, 13-14, 21-22. 59. McMullin. The Ught on the Hill, pp. 56, 72; H.V. Evatt, WiIliam Ho/man: Australian lAbour l..eiUfer, Angus & Roberston, Sydney, 1979, originally published in 1940, pp. 154, 177; Nairn,. 'McGowen', p. 274. 60. TheCo-Operatar, 14 March 1912, 21 March 1912; Blacket, Royal Commission, 1912, pp. 6-10, 13; Burke, Man of Steam, p. 46. 61. The Co-operator, 2 November, 1911. See further, Patmore, 'A History', pp. 253-4. 62. McKell represented this district as a Minister in various State Labor Governments between 1920- 1922,1925-1927,1930-1932 and as Premier and Treasurer in the period 1941-1947. Radi, Spearitt and Hinton,. Biographical Register, pp. 181-2; M. Easson, 'Introduction', pp. xv-xvi, K. Turner, 'From Boilennaker to Governor-General', pp. 1-4; B. Nairn, 'Parliamentarian: W.J. McKell in the New South Wales Parliament, 1917-1939', pp. 9-10, 13, in M. Easson (ed.), McKell: The Achievements of Sir William McKell, AlIen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988; SMH, 12 January 1985. Information also gratefully received from C. Cuneen, author of forthcoming biography of McKell. 63. Jones interview, 1983; Nairn, 'Parliamentarian', p. 21; Interview with Sir W. McKell conducted by L. Taksa 0025 July 1983; SMH, 12 October 1941; 12 January 1985; Nairn, 'The 1916-1917l..abor Party', p. 10; D. Hickie, Chow Hayes: Gunman, Angus & Robertsoo, Sydney, 1991, pp. 109-110. 64. E. Spratt, Eddie Ward: Firebrand of East Sydney, Rigby, Adelaide, 1965, pp. 7, 9-12. 65. Fitzgerald, Rising Damp, pp. 18, 21, 27, 34, 36, 144; TA. Coghlan, General Report on the Eleventh Census of New South Wales, Government Printer, Sydney, 1894, p. 121; S. Fitzgerald, 'Community, Politics and Work in the Inner-City, 1900-1970', inS. Fitzgerald and G. Wotherspoon (eds.), Minorities: Cultural Diversity in Sydney, State Library of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1995, p. 68. 66. Fitzgerald, Rising Damp, pp. 28-30, 36, 144; The Echo, 5 June 1890, pp. 2-3. 67. Radi, Spearritt and Hinton, Biographical Register, p. 38; Returns for 1887-1908, Government Gazette Employee Lists, SRAA; Jones interview, 1983; Interview with S. Jones conducted by R. Hennan in 1988 on behalf of the Combined Railway Unions Cultural Committee's Oral History Project; Marriage Certificate:TS. Jones and M. Parsons, 1900; Fitzgerald, Rising Damp, pp. 26-7, 40; Railway Personal History Cards, SRO. Family reconstructions, P. McIntyre. 68. jones interview, 1983; McKell, Willis, Mongan interviews; Fitzgerald, Rising Damp, p. 30. 69. jones interviews, 1983, 1988; Doyle, Ryan, interviews; Spratt, Eddie Ward, pp. 12, 15;J.T. Lang, 1 Remember: Autobiography, McNamara's Books, Katoomba, 1980, p. 254; J.T. Lang, The Great Bust: The Depression of the Thirties, McNamara's Books, Leura, 1980, originally published in 1962, p. 369; Rydon, A Biographical Register, p. 218; Personnel Cards, SRO and SRAA. 70. Glynn, Urbanisation, p. 40; Jones interview, 1983; Williams, The Social Significance of 1926', and Williams, 'fhe Importance of Community, 1977', in Gable (ed.), Raytnond Williams, pp. 106, 109, 114. 71. Figures taken from the NSW Census, 1891, pp. 370-7,446-53, cited inS.H. Fisher, We and Work in Sydney, 1870-1890: Aspects of Social Development in a Nineteenth Century City, unpublished PhD thesis, Macquarie University, 1976, pp. 224-225; Fitzgerald, Rising Damp, p. 43. 72. These were: J.A. Bodkin, J.j. Cahill, W.J. Carlton,.J.L Geraghty, H.C. Hoyle, R.B. Marsh, CH. Mattbews,J.A. Mulvihill, W.T. Murray,A.T. (Spence) Powell, W.M. rugby, E.J. Ward. Radi, Spearritt and Hinton, Biographical Register; Connolly, Biographical Register; Spratt, Eddie Ward, p. 7. 73. Before the Split, 17 of the 47 Labor Members in the NSW Legislative Assembly, or 36 per cent, were Catholics. Afterwards 11 of the 24, or 46 per cent, 'were of the faith'. Lang, I Remember, p. 22; B. Nairn, The 'Big Fella': Jack wngand the Australian wOOr Party, 1891-1949, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1995, originally published in 1986, pp. 7, 9, 18-19; C Hamilton, 'Irish Catholics of New South Wales and The Labor Party, 1890-1910', Historical Studies, vo!. 8, no. 31, 1958, pp. 264- 5. 74. McMullin, The Light on the Hill, p. 56; McKell interview;jones interview, 1983. 75. jones interview, 1983; McCalman. Struggletown, p. 22; Nairn, 'McGowen', p. 273; McKell, Mongan interviews. 76. Interview with C Dunnett conducted by L Taksa on 18 Marc:h.l999; Group Interview with B. Driver, F. Bollens, G. North, B. Matthews, B. Leech, 1. Bruce, B. Rhymes conducted at Eveleigh by L. Taksa and filmed by Summer Hill Media on behalf of the NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning on 17 November 1996; Group Interview with J. Aldridge, B. Rhymes, J. Uoyd and J. Lee conducted by L Taksa on 5 March 1999; Heam, Working Uves, pp. 42-3. 77. Evatt, WilIiam Holman, p. 187; Black, A History, voI. 6, p. 35; Nairn, 'McGowen', p. 273; Nairn, 'file 1916-17 Labor Party Crisis', p. 10; Radi, Spearritt and Hinten, Biographical Register, pp. 182, 212; Rydon, Biographical Register, p. 136; Personnel Cards, SRO. 78. Jones interview, 1983; Group interview, March 1999. Labour History. Number 79 • November 2000

79. Group interview, March 1999; G. Dorren. 'Communities within Community: Aspects of Neighbourhood in Seventeenth Century Harlem', Urban History. vol. 25, no. 2, 1988, p. 175. so. Scates, A New Australia, p. 11; Spratt, Eddie Ward, pp. 12, 15; Lang.l Remember, p. 254; Lang, The Great Bust, p. 369; Rydon,. A Biographictll Register, p. 218; Personnel Cards, SRO and SRAA. 81. Interviews with B. Dunnett on 10 May 1996; J.R. Bruce on 25 March 1996; K Johnsoo 0023 February 1996; B. Matthews on 20 February 1996 (all conducted by J. Kent); Interviews with L. Cavalierie on 5 November 1997; B. Rhymes on 31 July 1998; v. Russo on 30 October 1998 (all conducted. by L Taksa); OBU, 1 April 1914, p. 4, 1 April 1919. 82. Rtzilway Union Gazette, 11 July 1925, p. 15, 10 September 1926, p. 11; janes interview, 1988; Wll.soIl. The Railway Shop Committees' Struggle', pp. 45-6; Wdson, •Australia's FiIst Shop Committees', pp. 39-40. 83. The Ironworker, 1 January 1928. p. 14, May-July 1929, p. 32; The Railroad, 10 March 1931, p. 10; 10 December 1931, p. 5; Lang, The GreJlt Bust, pp. 302-5; G. Patmore, 'Systematic Management and Bureaucracy: The NSW Railways Prior to 1932', lAbour and Industry, vol. 1, no. 2, 1988, pp. 315-7; Heam, Working lives, p. 87. 84. Group interview, 1996; RtziIway Union Gazette, 10 September 1926, p. 11; The Ircmworker, 1 January 1928, p. 14; Redfem Branch Report, Qwrterly Report of the Federated Society of Boilennakers and Iron Shipbuilders of Australia, October 1929, p. 137. 85. The RtziIroad, 10 June 1929, p. 5, 10 April 1930, p. 22; Jones interview, 1988; Interview with F. Bollins conducted by L Taksa on 10 August 1998. 86. The Rtzilroad, 10 December 1931, p. 5, 10 April 1933, p. 8, 10 April 1935, p. 10, 10 May 1935, p. 12. 87. The lAbor Daily, 11 November 1938, p. 5; Cavalierie, Rhymes, Russo interviews; The Rtzilroad, 10 February 1930, p. 1,15 November 1938, p. 14, February 1936, p. 7, 23 May 1939, p. 11.