From the Ashes of the Old

a blog of Queensland labour history

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Labor’s Socialist Objectives

The media brouhaha around Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ modest effort to rein in some of the publicly-funded largesse to capital in the form of negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions reminds us that even the modern Labor Party can still sometimes touch a raw nerve with the owners of wealth. As Humphrey McQueen explained in 2021:

“Like every domain of life under the rule of capital, the state remains a site for conflict, the outcomes of which are conditioned by the relative strengths of the contending classes.”

These days the conflict is muted, so heavily does the relative strength favour the capitalist class. The very timidity of Labor’s proposed tweaks to the tax system tells the story. And Chalmers’ willingness to concede already that his measures might have gone too far serves only to highlight the point: wealth owners have all the clout. In the same budget, Chalmers took millions of dollars from NDIS clients, amongst the poorest and most vulnerable section of our community. There has been outrage over these cuts too, but no Labor back down, hardly even defensiveness. Meanwhile, military spending went up.

Workers do not have the organisational strength to hold the ALP to account, either for its constant concessions to business or for its attacks on the disadvantaged. But as the McQueen quote implies, this has not always been the case. In the past, the ALP came under real pressure from unions to make concessions to our side. Consequently, some of its policies had the effect of shifting wealth from capital to labour and even curtailing some of capital’s advantages.

The ebbs and flows of workers’ power in the forums of the ALP can be traced in the history of Labor’s own socialisation objective, a version of state socialism adopted to appease leftwing unions in 1921 and  then periodically fought over at ALP conferences. It was not until the destruction of union power under the Accord agreements of the 1980s that the socialisation objective was finally relegated to the past, freeing Labor to implement its neoliberalist modernisation agenda.

On the centenary of the objective, Humphrey McQueen reflected on this history in an article he wrote for the Queensland Journal of Labour History. In the light of Jim Chalmers’ recent budget, we have decided to re-publish the piece here. Its rerun also marks the occasion of Humphrey presenting the 2026 Alex Macdonald Lecture for the Brisbane Labour History Association. Titled ‘Colouring-in the Rag Trade, 1850s to 1930s’, the lecture will be delivered at 6.00pm, Wednesday 1 July, at the ETU meeting room, Merivale Street, South Brisbane.

Humphrey McQueen on the stump

Labor’s Socialist Objectives: from ‘Socialist Tiger’ to ‘Sacred Cow’ to ‘Dead Dog’

Reflections on the centenary of the Socialization Objective of October 28, 1921

(originally published in the QJLH, No. 32 Autumn/Winter 2021)

All ‘news’ is fake because it derives from ‘the context of no context.’ Context, of course, is not everything since exactly how each decision is arrived at sculpts its content. The shaping context for the Labor Party’s adoption of a new Socialization Objective to October 1921 was twofold: first, the Bolshevik Revolution and, secondly, last century’s First Great Slaughter. The Objective’s content is a double surprise because it calls for socialization – not socialism or just nationalization – and outlines a plan for getting there.

Bourgeois revolutions succeeded before 1917, buffeted by rebellious working peoples. The Paris Commune in 1870-71 provided an exemplar for Soviet power through its councils of workers and soldiers. Where Russia stood alone was in surviving everything the forces of reaction threw at it. Japan’s armies of intervention did not withdraw until May 1922.

The centuries-long dream of a world free from war and from want was being realised. The aims of the Victorian Socialist Party since 1905were no longer songs at its Sunday school but deeds around the globe.

If Bolshevism provided the positive ingredient for adopting the Socialization Objective, the War to End All Wars was proof positive that monopolising capitals possessed not a shred of moral authority. More than ever, capitalism deserved to perish… read more.

21 June 2026

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Practising Democracy to Defend It

Sam Woripa Watson is a Wangeriburra and Birri Gubba man and a prominent justice activist in Brisbane. He is currently being held at gunpoint by the Israeli military, having been unlawfully abducted in international waters near Cyprus as he and hundreds of other activists were attempting to break Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza.

Before his boat was attacked, Sam spoke to supporters in Australia about the role of direct action in building pressure for progressive change. He made the point that the notorious Acts that controlled the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Queensland for generations were not abolished through parliamentary benevolence. They were, as he put it, smashed by blackfullas and their supporters taking to the streets. Rallying, marching, speaking out and occupying created the political pressure that led to reform. It required standing up to a racist police force. It involved arrests. Sam knows the history well. His grandfather, another Sam, was a leader of that struggle in the 1970s and 80s.

Sam’s observation highlights an important aspect of democracy. Many if not most important reforms start as acts of public dissent. The democratising of parliament itself began in the English Civil War. The abolition of slavery was precipitated by slave revolts. Unionisation of labour was outlawed in the UK until workers’ mass action in the 19th century threatened to erupt into outright rebellion. British women won the vote through militant civil disobedience.

Here in Australia, representative parliaments emerged from popular mobilisations that challenged the elitism of colonial governance. Protest movements expanded the scope of democracy, establishing that protest itself is a vital form of democratic engagement. As Terry Irving has explained:

Democracy was not only the goal of these movements, or movement if considered as a whole, but the content of its very practice. The movement was itself a manifestation of democracy, allowing non-elites an opportunity to participate actively in politics over matters of direct concern to them – in particular, matters of labour, land access and practical political equality. (The Southern Tree of Liberty, p.4)

This tradition has continued ever since. The massive street protests in Queensland in the Bjelke Petersen decades, for example, were democracy manifest, a direct popular repudiation of the corruption and authoritarianism of the party in power, and an expression of an alternative model of politics defined by direct participation and equality. The Goss Labor government that replaced the National Party in 1989 may have reformed away the worst elements of Bjelke Petersen’s malfeasance, but it should not be forgotten that the reformers in the Goss cabinet were themselves heavily influenced by this culture of mass defiance. Their party became electable because they (tentatively) gave voice to a mood for change that grew from narratives generated by the protest movements. The status quo could no longer hold, and the street mobilisations, backed on occasion by union industrial action, were decisive in facilitating that rupture. Popular democracy wrung the changes.

Today, across Australia, indeed the world, popular democracy is under attack. Free speech is being curtailed, protest activity is being criminalised, speaking out is framed as a ‘threat to social cohesion’. In Queensland, phrases expressing Palestinians’ desire to live without repression on their ancestral lands have been outlawed on the demonstrably absurd grounds that they incite antisemitism. Uttering or displaying these words can result in a two-year gaol term. One of Australia’s leading criminal defence lawyers, Nick Hanna, has described the ban as “undoubtedly one of the most repressive laws ever passed in this country.”

People are fighting back; protestors continue to take to the streets, civil society organisations are mobilising. One recent national initiative, from the Australian Democracy Network, calls upon organisations to endorse a Declaration of Our Right to Protest. So far, 120 organisations have signed on. The Brisbane Labour History Association will soon join the list. The sign on page is here.

Closer to home, the main Palestinian solidarity organisation in Brisbane, Justice for Palestine Magan-djin, has appealed to unions, faith groups and community organisations to sign a joint statement in support of their Not Our Law campaign, directed at the Queensland government’s attempt to silence Palestinian voices. The sign up is here. JFP can be contacted via their social media for more information.

Why should organisations endorse these statements? The answer that springs immediately to mind will be familiar to everyone in the labour movement; it is the old IWW slogan, ‘An Injury to One is an Injury to All’. Sooner or later, the erosion of democracy affects every one of us. So uniting now to defend it while we can is in everyone’s interests.

Popular democracy on the streets of Brisbane, 24 August 2025

20 May 2026

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Cold War Kid: Resisting the Vietnam War

An important new book on war and peace is almost out. Cold War Kid by Rowan Cahill is a personal account of the period from 1945 to 1972. As the publicity puts it, the book tells the story of how a would-be poet and beachcomber solo-sailor was drafted during the first Vietnam call-up in 1965 and became a prominent opponent of both war and conscription. It is a memoir but as historian Hannah Forsyth points out, it is so much more. “Rowan sees the militaristic thread through Australia’s history, the violence this history imposes on us all, and our individual and collective spiritual struggle to overcome it.” With war and militarism again pervading our lives, this is a book for our times. Order a copy here.

1 May 2026

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Workers Resisting Racism, North Queensland 1925-1935

Racism in Australia is on the march again. A referendum to give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples a ‘voice’ to Parliament has been resoundingly defeated, a terrorist attack on an Invasion Day rally in Perth has been met with media and government indifference, migrants are being scapegoated for the housing and cost of living crises, governments are legislating to silence the voices of Palestinians, Aboriginal children are being incarcerated in record numbers, and One Nation is surging in the polls, mirroring the return of Trump and the rise of Reform in the United Kingdom.

As a product of a settler-colonial society founded on an ideology of (British) white supremacy and the dispossession and mass murder of Indigenous peoples, racism is deeply ingrained in the psyche of white Australia (a form of unconscious bias, as the psychologists would politely say). But the mechanisms for racism’s reproduction and how it intersects with the structures of class and gender have long been the subject of debate. It has been widely argued, for example, that the White Australia Policy was a creature of the labour movement, driven by either economic protectionism or attitudinal racism or some combination of both. Other writers have challenged these views, arguing that racism primarily articulates the material interests of the Australian employing class and the state.

In 1994 Jeff Rickertt tackled these questions directly in a study of racism and anti-racism in the North Queensland sugar industry in the decade from 1925 to 1935, written as a thesis for a Postgraduate Diploma of Arts at The University of Queensland. The study revealed an often-overlooked history of working-class unity in defiance of cultivated racialisation. Recently, the thesis has been digitised and preserved in UQ’s digital repository, eSpace. The digital version is now on open access, freely available for the public to consult. The Queensland Journal of Labour History believes it makes an important contribution to our understanding of racism in Australia.

Working Class Resistance to Racism: The Labour Movement and Non-Anglo Migrants in the North Queensland Sugar Industry, 1925-1935

21 April 2026

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Peace is Union Business

The 2026 Palm Sunday Peace Rally in Brisbane was organised by the Refugee Action Collective, Justice for Palestine Magan-djin, Just Peace Queensland and the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN). For IPAN the theme was ‘End all wars’ and ‘End all preparations for war including AUKUS’. Justice for Palestine Magan-djin called for Peace & Justice for All! No More US/Israeli Wars! Freedom for Palestine, Lebanon, Iran & Sudan!

Brisbane’s Palm Sunday Peace Rallies started in 1982. Nuclear disarmament and an end to uranium mining were the themes of the early years. Subsequently, the emphasis shifted in response to international events such as the US interventions into Latin America, the Iraq War, the continuing killings in Gaza (termed as genocide by the International Court of Justice) and now in Lebanon, and the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.  The harsh mistreatment of refugees in Australia has also been a prominent theme in recent times.

Brisbane Rally for Nuclear Disarmament, Palm Sunday 1983. The rally organising committee comprised Simon Blackwood, Bruce Doyle, Senator George Georges, Owen Pearson, Barbara Robson, Joan Shears and Greg Weir. George Georges chaired the rally. (Film courtesy of Leftpress Printing Society, available through the Radical Times Archives.)

The rallies are an enduring feature of the long struggle to end war and to look after its victims. They bring peace organisations together with religious groups and trade unions. Trade union involvement is especially important. Organisations concerned with the horrors of particular conflicts (such as those in West Papua, Palestine, Ukraine, Myanmar and Sub-Saharan Africa) look to the union movement for support. Broader peace groups also seek union alliances. IPAN, for example, has its own working group on unions and peace.

For their part, unions have an intrinsic interest in peace. Military conflicts directly affect workers. For example, it is reported that since October 2023 Israeli forces have killed 1,722 healthcare workers in Gaza, approximately 2 health workers per day. [i] Gazan doctors and nurses have also been abducted, incarcerated and tortured by Israeli forces. In Gaza every university has been destroyed. Teachers and administrators who have survived these attacks have been left without livelihoods, and most of them have been displaced from their homes. Media workers are another target. The Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that “a record 129 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide in 2025.” [ii] Over three-quarters were in conflict settings and two-thirds were in Gaza and Lebanon.

In a quite novel approach, the journalists’ union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), established a Media Safety and Solidarity Fund in 2005 to directly assist families and children of slain media workers. MEAA members are asked to contribute the initial pay increase from new enterprise agreements. Families in Fiji, Nepal and the Philippines have been assisted by this scheme. [iii]

Maritime workers are another group directly affected by war. At the end of March 2026, the International Maritime Organisation reported that “some 20,000 seafarers remain stranded on ships in the Strait of Hormuz” and described this as “unprecedented in the post-Second World War era”. [iv] It lists 15 deaths on ships in the first 10 days of March.  These may be underestimates; the Forward Seamen’s Union of India estimates around 23,000 Indian seafarers alone are in the conflict zone. [v]

War affects workers indirectly too. Military spending sucks resources away from the public provision of health, education, housing and social welfare. As evident in the current energy crisis, jobs and living standards are put at risk by war’s economic disruptions. For those living in war zones, the lasting environmental impacts fall disproportionately on people without the means to re-locate from contaminated areas, while war’s contribution to global warming impacts working communities in every part of the planet. War pits worker against worker along national lines and encourages them to side with ‘their’ governments and employers. This weakens solidarity. Put plainly, for workers, class comes before nationality.

In 2023, the Queensland Journal of Labour History printed a short history of union involvement in peace movements. The article, available here, documents demonstrations and other protest actions in response to armed conflicts over the previous 20 years. The list includes mobilisations against the Iraq War (2003-2011), the Indonesian military’s actions in Timor-Leste (1999-2000), the military regime in Myanmar across the 2000s and its coup in 2021, the civil war in Bougainville in the 1990s and the coups in Fiji in 1987, 2000 and 2006. 

The pursuit of peace is justified by the union principle that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all.’ When capitalist nations go to war or when authoritarian regimes use military violence to stay in power, working people suffer more than any other section of society.  One way or another, all workers are affected.  War brings them no gains, only suffering and setback. Peace is in workers’ interests, peace is union business.

Howard Guille

3 April 2026

Queensland Railway Union peace display, 1918. The 1st obscured banner states ‘Peace Will Be the Result of Industrial Unionism – One Industry One Union’. The 2nd states ‘To Relieve Suffering is the Mission of the Workers’. (Courtesy Museums Victoria)

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My father, Alex Macdonald, was born in Greenock on the River Clyde, Scotland, on 21 May 1910, the middle of five children; his parents were Alexander Macdonald and Sybil Smith.  His family origins on both parents’ sides are in the Isle of Lewis and Harris, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

Dad’s mother Sybil died of tuberculosis in early 1917 before he was seven.   His father Alexander then cared for the four eldest children in Greenock with the support of relatives and employed housekeepers.  The youngest child, Colin, was a baby when their mother died; he was raised by two aunts on the croft where his mother had been born in the village of Leurbost in the Isle of Lewis.  He subsequently raised his own family on that croft, where two of his children – my first cousins – live today.

In 1920 when Alex was ten his father married one of the housekeepers – ‘Steppie’ as the children called her was a cause of family breakup.

Dad left school at the age of twelve; ran away to London after his father’s remarriage; left home to live with aunts; and worked in a Greenock shipyard for a short time … read more.

18 February 2026

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