Labor’s titan: the story of Percy Brookfield, 1878-192, Gilbert Giles Roper
Source: Warrnambool Institute Press, 1983, edited by Allan and Wendy Scarfe. Copyright Allan and Wendy Scarfe. This digital edition for Marxists
Internet Archive is published with the permission of the copyright holders. It may be used for private study but not for any commercial purpose.
Transcription, mark-up: Steve Painter
I remember when I was in opposition, in the stormy days of the war, the National Party could find no word in the English language low enough and mean enough to hurl at me. I should have been hanged, drawn and quartered … I have never advocated a strike in my life until other means have failed, and nobody regrets a strike more than I do. I have been in so many strikes that I know the suffering which is always entailed.
It was soon obvious that Percy Brookfield had entered the New South Wales parliament as a distinctly new type of Labor representative. In general, the Labor politicians of his times had proven incapable of breaking with orthodox parliamentarianism. Some of them donned the special parliamentary attire that was fashionable at Westminster — a practice that led to them being referred to as “Blackcoats”. Most of them liked to stick close to so-called “public opinion”, and were fond of uttering platitudes and stressing their desire to “represent not merely the workers but the community as a whole”.
Persistent efforts were made by militant workers to pin these slppery opportunists to a principled position so that they could be prevented from making all kinds of concessions to the prejudices of backward elements in the electorates. Great stress was laid on the compilation of the platform at Labor Party conferences. Signed pledges and undated resignations of politicians were sought, and many attempts were made to introduce “the initiative referendum and recall”.
Speaking at an election victory gathering in Gladstone Park, Brookfield approached the betrayal from a more scientific standpoint. “The Labor Party should never have been on the Treasury benches,” he argued, “until the organised strength of the workers behind the members was powerful enough to compel them to carry out the policy laid down by Conference in accordance with the expressed will of the mass of the toilers. That omission resulted in the crisis we are now experiencing.”
Brookfield received a parliamentary salary of £500 a year. He set about mastering the tactics of the parliament: the best methods of representing the needs of Broken Hill and his miner constituents to parliament or to the bureaucracy; the best ways for a backbencher to influence the policies of the Labor Party in the party room; how to use parliament as a forum for expressing and publicising working class policies and for criticising the performance of the government in such a way that the press would report his stinging attacks to the voters.
He found that parliamentary standing orders made it easy for the government to ignore the Labor Party’s existence, yet the electorate had no say on parliamentary procedures. The premier at that time still had the power to decide whether and when parliament should be dissolved or whether it should be prorogued for any period of time before dissolution. The premier could time parliamentary decisions to make them electoral issues. And not only could the premier decide when parliament was in session, he could also decide how many days in a session it would actually sit. This was about one day in five, during Brookfield’s time in parliament. That Holman had such powers added to Brookfield’s antagonism towards him for being a “renegade” to the Labor Party over conscription and an oppressor of the working class through his Crimes Act.
The crudest form of government control of parliament, very important at that time, was the gag. Brookfield was later to have both the gag and the dissolution of parliament used against him to prevent him winning a retrial for the twelve Wobblies.
He found soon enough that an opposition member was very limited in what he might do to prevent the government’s procedural tyranny. The best and almost the only effective weapon the opposition of that time had within parliament was the censure motion. The house usually adjourned to allow censure motions to be debated on the next sitting. The opposition of course gathered itself into united action. Brookfield was to take a very prominent part in the use of the censure motion against the dominance of the National Party government.
On the other hand, however, he was still open to the radical criticisms of parliament from unionists that it should be abolished. Although he was an ally of the Industrial Workers of the World, often sharing a public platform with their speakers, and said he owed his allegiance as did they, to the red flag, he did not escape their anti-parliamentary criticisms. On May 19, 1917, Direct Action deplored his desertion of the class war:
The Australian workers are undoubtedly getting sick of the whole business of electing political bell-wethers, and getting in return a good deal of cheek, and no results worth considering. Political parties have … emancipated ex-umbrella peddlers, third-rate miners and refined swagmen, both financially and intellectually … that is the only service they perform, although a necessary one. They keep the movement clear of drifters and hindrances to progress … The operation of environment works wonders in days and weeks and years: When Brookfield, MLA, took the oath, one of the confidence men took umbrage at it. “Leave him alone,” said Premier Holman. “He’ll be all right when he draws his first salary.” Holman knew.
Throughout the tremendous cavalcade of events that followed Brookfield’s election to parliament he adopted a consistent working-class attitude on every issue, whether it was to resist censorship of the labour press, or to demand representation for wheat lumpers on the Wheat Board. He made frequent appearances at public meetings over a wide area in order to report fully to the electors. One such gathering was held on April 1, 1917, at Adelaide, when he was greeted tumultuously by an audience of 6000. Describing this rally, Brookfield wrote to George Dale: “A few booed at the start, and I told them that there was plenty of scope for the schoolmaster when a man was condemned without a hearing.”
At many of Brookfield’s meetings some of the audience came with minds already poisoned by the venom of the capitalist press. This vilification and misrepresentation generally recoiled on its sponsors. An account of Brookfield’s impact upon an audience of strangers was given by the late Charles Trefle, who recalled a meeting he once chaired for “Brookie” at Temora, New South Wales. Sections of the crowd had been prejudiced against Brookfield, but when he was introduced and rose to begin his speech there was audible astonishment at his great physique and impressive diction.
In most countries, including Australia, the opponents of World War I were driven to adopt special measures to circumvent the harsh restrictions on free speech and circulation of literature. Eugene V. Debs, in the United States, found that it was impracticable to give full expression to his opinions, although he refused to utter even a single word that could be construed as support for the war. Socialists exiled by the Czar published their literature abroad and smuggled it into Russia. In Germany the Spartacus group produced anonymous antiwar propaganda, which was then circulated surreptitiously. Brookfield sought to sidestep the repressive War Precautions Act by stipulating certain conditions under which he would be prepared to participate in the war. The nature of those conditions was such that had they been observed the war would have been stripped of its capitalist character.
The search for evidence of what Brookfield believed had been a “frame-up” was also a dangerous business. All kinds of obstruction and provocation were employed to discourage any investigation of the circumstances through which the “Wobblies” had been “railroaded” to prison. Writing to George Dale, Brookfield described an incident that occurred in Sydney:
Misfortunes tell thick upon me soon after you left. I narrowly escaped a put-up job — a brawl in the street, but fortunately for me I have got wise with experience, and I took no notice of several vile insults which were handed me as I walked down towards my diggings.
He told parliament of the campaign of intimidation:
Every obstacle has been placed in my way and in the way of others who have been trying to ferret out evidence. Men have been molested in the street … When I have been fossicking out evidence I have been waylaid and manhandled in Sydney … by some ruffians … It was my size and my strong right arm that carried me through.[1]
On June 2, 1917 he addressed the conference of the Labor Party held at the Trades Hall, giving the facts of the IWW frame-up. Conference elected a committee of six to collect evidence in support of a petition to be presented to parliament calling for the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the cases of the imprisoned IWW men.
As 1917 wore on, grief and horror brought increased resistance to the war. Brookfield described the mood accurately when he said:
“Do not think for one moment that because you believe in this war being carried to the bitter end, the vast majority of the people of Australia wish it to be carried to the bitter end. The people of the world are war-weary. They are sick of the awful slaughter … While some people talk about continuing this war to the last man and the last shilling, the great majority of the people of the world are heartily sick of such jingoistic piffle and would like to see the war at an end.”[2]
In the Messines sector 10,178 young Australians were slaughtered in one week. The accumulated deaths of 50,000 Australians on the Western Front caused a marked falling off in voluntary recruitment. Doing their “duty”, National Party politicians and supporters with a newly appointed and imaginative director-general of recruiting struggled to turn the tide of disillusionment. They aimed at recruiting 250 men per day. The campaign took on new dimensions, particularly after Hughes returned to power at the May federal election. All sorts of emotional and propaganda bullying were employed. A Speaker’s Companion contained a woman’s pledge to give her body only to a soldier: “If there are not enough soldiers to go round I will cheerfully die an old maid.” Women were exhorted to urge their sons and husbands: “You must go.” The government increase allowances for soldiers’ dependents (Brookfield had been highly critical of the little they received), curtailed horse-racing, boxing and drinking hours, and persecuted German and Irish scapegoats for “disloyalty”. Unions accused employers of deliberately sacking workers to force them to go to war. In addition, unionists felt resentfully that the New South Wales government was worsening their working conditions to induce them to volunteer to go to the trenches in France, where they faced a one in six chance of dying. To be harassed for the sake of Australian profiteers and the British obstinate insistence on fighting Germany to unconditional surrender was too much.
On July 9, 1917, Brookfield was charged at Central Police Court, Sydney, with using insulting words in the Domain, where he was reported to have said that most of the civil laws had gone by the board and the War Precautions Act had taken their place. Intolerance reigned supreme, “even in this vast audience, which contains so many pimps and spies, whose object is to do their best to place working-class speakers behind prison bars. It is wonderful to me that these men belong to the working class. No doubt their mothers looked on them with pride some time in their lives, but by hell, they should be proud of them now!” In court, Inspector Nolan noted that the defendant had been convicted on September 15, 1916, at Broken Hill, for abusive language, and on August 5, 1916, for riotous behaviour. Brookfield was convicted and fined £5, with six shillings costs, in default, one month in jail, and ordered to enter into a surety of £50 to be of good behaviour for twelve months.
He was again charged on July 16, 1917, this time with making a statement likely to prejudice recruiting, including the words: “The only flag I will spill a drop of blood for is the red flag.” His supporters, who were now legion, interpreted the succession of charges as yet another determined attempt to suppress free speech. On July 22, a mass meeting of Broken Hill unionists decided to organise a campaign against the persecution of Brookfield. Upon Brookfield’s return to “The Hill” he was given a civic reception, the crowd filling the Town Hall. In reply, he described the provocation to which he had been subjected. A great stopwork free-speech demonstration was held on July 26 at Broken Hill, on the occasion of Brookfield’s appearance before the court, where he was fined £50 or six months jail and also ordered to enter into a recognisance of £100 and provide a surety of £100 to comply with section 28 of the War Precautions Act regulations during the existing war with Germany; in default, six months in jail. An appeal was lodged. So great was the crowd in front of the court house in Argent Street that at 11.30am the tram service was brought to a standstill.
Having made his way to the Trades Hall after the hearing, Brookfield said: “Fellow men, before I went into the court, before I left Sydney, I knew what would happen. They told me in Sydney that I was to be convicted, and I well knew it.” He then hit out at the “jingo-mad fanatics”, and declared with passion: “They dare not tell the manhood of this country, or of any other country, the real facts about war … I can assure the people of Broken Hill that they are not alone in their fight for the retention of free speech, the glorious privilege for which the bravest of our race have bled and died.” In the afternoon there was a large procession to the Central Reserve, where a huge meeting was held.[3]
On July 18, 1917, Brookfield attended the opening of the New South Wales parliament by Lieutenant-Governor Sir William Porous Cullen, and listened to ALP leader John Storey’s address in reply. George Fuller, the colonial (or chief) secretary and acting premier, immediately took Storey to task for Labor’s lack of confidence in the lieutenant-governor and for its peace proposals. Later, during the debate over the supply bill, the government called the IWW a menace to the community and smeared the Labor Party with it, to which opposition member O’Brien retorted that every honourable member who had made use of the IWW bogey ought to be arrested under the War Precautions Act. A huge row was brewing.
In parliament, Brookfield formed his closest association with the so-called “industrialists” of the Labor Party, Tom Mutch, William O’Brien, Carlo Lazzarini and Greg McGirr. His parliamentary leader was John Storey, who was new to the position and somewhat uncertain about a member who had been so maliciously condemned in the press and so provocative and independent of the Sydney Labor League in his electioneering speeches. Storey, however, arranged for him to deliver his maiden speech on the second night after his address in reply. Waiting his turn until ten o'clock at night on July 17, 1917, Brookfield listened angrily to the jeering of George Fuller, who charged that Storey had no choice but to speak in reply in order to do his duty to the party he was leading but not much good could come of such a little flutter. Brookfield was infuriated by what he considered Fuller’s self-righteous appeal for both sides to join patriotically together to do their best for the country at war.
Brookfield spoke for the best part of forty minutes, after which the house adjourned until four the following afternoon. Aware of the bigoted antagonism to him of the honourable members on the government benches he began courteously and unassumingly:
I know that there must be some rules and regulations to govern this chamber and I will do my utmost to obey those rules. If I do transgress it will not be out of any disrespect to this chamber, but from inexperience.
Then his tone changed. He spoke “keenly and feelingly”:
I am under a ban at present, and I may say that this is the first time for a considerable period that I have had the pleasure of speaking without the menace of the War Precautions Act hanging over me. I have been accused of disloyalty, revolution, IWW, and goodness knows what else. Of course, it was of material benefit to many members of the government; in fact, many of them owe their seats to the malicious mis-statements in the press of which they made great use at the elections. As regards the disloyalty charge which was laid against me — that I said I would not spill a drop of blood for the Union Jack — you can take that for what it is worth. I did make that statement, but there was a proviso — while the government allowed returned soldiers to starve and their wives and children also, but that if the government would remedy that defect and cut out the blood-stained profiteer so rampant in Australia, I would make one too and die for Australia; but they maliciously left that out of my speech and made a statement which has been used for nothing else but political influence for the National Party.[4]
After denying various other mis-statements about him he insisted it was neither fair nor just for the newspapers to condemn him for asking the people of Broken Hill:
“To organise and keep on organising, so that they could by peaceable methods use their industrial strength to better their conditions and leave this world, if possible, in a better condition than when they came into it.”[5]
He argued that the freedom for which Australians were fighting was the freedom of the National Party to prosecute him in court for statements he had made four months earlier and which had been falsely represented as a menace to the country, and be attacked the magistrate who had praised him for helping the police quell the riot and then convicted him of an offence. After this “introduction” he pleaded passionately for peace:
“Honourable members of this house … I would rather see a spirit of stop-the-war than a spirit of win-the-war. Rather than put forward a plea for the annihilation of nations, I would prefer that honourable members should foster a spirit of peace. Whilst we should not in any way relax our efforts, still I think we should grasp at any prospect of peace and do our utmost to assist any peace movement which may come about. It is strange that when talking about the war we say that if there is an early peace war will break out again within the next fifty years: therefore it is better to sacrifice a few thousand more lives now to secure a permanent peace … if war is the immutable law of the universe … it would be better for this earth to strike a planet and be finished with it.[6]
His listeners were perhaps more courteous than honest, for they agreed that his speech was one of moderation to which no one could take exception, although he attacked the mining companies as killers and profiteers, the provisions for repatriation of soldiers as miserly, and the appointments to the upper house as “dodderers”. He blamed the government for the unemployment and dismissals of railwaymen at Coffs Harbour who were cajoled to Broken Hill and left there penniless, he dismissed lawyers, doctors, and the Arbitration Court and defended the right of workers to strike to better their position, save their lives or protect their health.
He concluded with a heartfelt plea that in the interest of justice further inquiry should be made into the conviction of the twelve IWW men:
Knowing how wrongfully I myself was convicted makes me doubt the guilt of other men who are placed in the same position … Most of the police on those cases received bonuses — even those who reported fires which they said they know did not exist, and caused accounts to be put in the papers, received bonuses. Why? In Broken Hill they had photos of these men at the [polling] booth doors, and men and women were told that if they voted against conscription they would be fire-bugs and murderers.…
These men were denounced prior to their conviction by public men who should have known better, and whose sense of justice and fairness should have restrained them. There were denunciatory articles in the newspapers … and the men were deprived of the services of their counsel, Mr James, who took up a cabinet position at a stage when it was almost impossible to secure the services of other counsel properly versed in their case … Surely the government could have waited another couple of weeks to allow him to fulfil what was an honourable obligation to these men. Their very existence was at stake.[7]
Debate next evening contained many references to Brookfield, the most flattering noting that he had the courage to say what he thought, that he allowed no one in the Labor Party or the Labor Leagues to manufacture his conscience for him, and that he was a man of independent thought who had successfully defied the party machine. The obvious blandishments, the comment that he and Storey were the Alpha and Omega of the Labor Party, may have been intended to cause a split in Labor ranks, however, what he had said outside parliament was attacked by some honourable members, one of whom said that what the federal government was planning to do to the IWW should also be done to Brookfield.
Thereafter, no important debate in the ancient chamber in Macquarie Street could be regarded as complete without a contribution from the member for Sturt. He particularly angered the secretary and the minister for mines and the minister for labour and industry, and Premier Holman apparently hated him vehemently. Some honourable members called him a “guttersnipe” and insinuated that he was an enemy agent who should be jailed. He received a deluge of threatening letters. He endured them in the interests of fairness and justice to his class and to the trade union movement.
If Brookfield’s allegations were true, the New South Wales government deliberately conspired during July with the commonwealth government to squeeze the unions employed by the state government. “Americanisation” of the state rail and tram services and coal mines was planned, through the introduction of the Taylor system of “industrial efficiency”. The foremen were to compile time cards on the men, which were to be kept secret from them. According to Brookfield, in full expectation that the workers might resist “Americanisation,” the New South Wales government at a bureau in Sydney prepared lists of scabs willing to take the union members’ jobs if they struck, whilst the federal government arranged huge stockpiles of coal, and passed a law to destroy the IWW. Brookfield accused Holman’s government:
I will deal with the strike and what led up to it … There were hundreds of men from the country who were registered in a bureau in Sydney as being willing to assist the government in the event of any industrial dispute arising. Why should the government have had their names registered? Why did the government, per medium of the coal companies, have hundreds of thousands of tons of coal stacked? … If any government anticipated a strike by making provision for it, then clearly it intended to create that set of circumstances which would cause a strike … Then we have to take into consideration also the premier’s secret memorandum. It all points to the fact that there was collusion to bring about that economic condition that would starve men into the trenches.[8]
The Taylor system[9] was introduced, capping off a host of longstanding grievances. Unionists feared the secret cards would be used to sack them, so forcing them to enlist. Resentment flared. On August 1, 1917, men at the Randwick and Eveleigh workshops in Sydney struck and other workshops followed suit. The union leaders were pushed into action by the spontaneous outburst of anger. Next day road transport workers, miners and maritime workers employed by the government joined them in Australia’s greatest work stoppage. Seventy thousand New South Wales workers struck and a further twenty-six thousand in other states struck in solidarity with them. Brookfield unconditionally supported the general strike. This brought a shower of vicious attacks on his “disloyalty”.
On behalf of the New South Wales cabinet the acting premier, George Fuller, issued on August 5 a second government manifesto, attacking the strikers, falsely blaming the Wobblies for the stoppage, and calling for “volunteers”
… The Enemies of Britain and her allies have succeeded in plunging Australia into a general strike. For the time being they have crippled our country’s efforts to assist in the Great War. At the back of this strike lurk the IWW … Without realising it, many trades unions have become the tools of disloyalists and revolutionaries. A great conspiracy has been fomenting for the past two years to prevent Australia rendering further assistance to Britain and her allies …
The government is not against the unions. All unionists who volunteer for work will be accepted as unionists, and will be enrolled as members of new unions registered under the Trades Unions Act.
The unions’ Defence Committee issued its manifesto explaining that the men believed the secret timecards could lead to moves to speed them up, to deliberate falsification of records, and to victimisation.
Acting Premier Fuller insisted that the issue was “the supremacy of the state” against “the turbulence of a minority”, the “loyalty of a man to the supremacy of the state over the individual” and his government refused all attempts at arbitration, demanding utter surrender by the “Pro-German Disloyalists”. His government’s ruthlessness was supported eagerly by the Hughes federal government and also by the Australian Employers’ Federation. Prime Minister Hughes vindictively declared that the strikers had committed “a heinous crime”. Scabs went into the jobs and union strike leaders were arrested and jailed.
At question time on August 7, Brookfield, Carlo Lazzarini and Tom Mutch asked a string of angry questions in parliament about the card system. Brookfield asked Fuller:
If he knew the chief railways commissioner refused to meet a deputation from the New South Wales Railways Employees Union saying that these men had a good job, were well paid and he would not listen to any evidence?”[10]
He asked the minister for railways:
If he knew the card system had been abolished in the UK and the USA because it required many bosses, these were regarded as spies by the men, and the output was less?[11]
He also demanded:
Whether men were being dismissed from the railways without being told what they were dismissed for and without being heard in their own defence?[12]
To the Labor attack that they had replaced the peaceful and civilised method of arbitration with a barbarous and Hunnish method of industrial management, Fuller replied that the government, not “irresponsible trade union leaders”, ran the country.
On the following days Brookfield was constantly gagged for his “irregular” and “out of order” questions as he tried to attack Beeby, the minister for labour and industry, (and an ex-Labor man who had defected with Holman) for introducing a sweating system and trying to destroy unionism by imposing penalties on strikers. He demanded that the length of the trial of the card system be three months only and a full public inquiry be held into its operation. When Beeby virtuously replied that the object of the introduction of the card system was to “get at a proper and reasonable system”, Brookfield was so angry at what he considered his dissimulation that he swore. Mutch attacked the National Party for its rallies for scabs, its having the post office steam open his and Trades Hall letters (and he showed samples), and for sending bogus telegrams to men asking them to go back to work. He maintained that government advertisements were lies that the papers published although they refused to publish his statements in support of the strike committee.
Throughout the dispute Brookfield both attacked and pleaded with the government:
I ask the government in all sincerity … to appoint an independent tribunal to deal with this case — to do their utmost to arrive at some satisfactory solution of this great industrial upheaval.[13]
He blamed the wealthy men, not the workers, for the trouble:
I deplore the strike as much as any honourable member opposite, knowing full well what misery is entailed upon the workers … The position presents itself to me in this way: a dispute arose between the chief commissioner for railways and the engineers and others employed in the Randwick workshops; and without consideration or reason the government thrust itself on the side of Mr Fraser and his fellow commissioners — why, goodness only knows. Now, Mr Fraser is not the angel he is generally supposed to be. A couple of months ago I had to interview him on behalf of the New South Wales Tramway Employees Association. I was asked to arrange a deputation. But Mr Fraser absolutely refused to admit any deputation … How can you expect industrial peace with a man like that? Would honourable members put up with such treatment? …
In introducing this card system the government knew full well there was industrial unrest in the shops at Eveleigh and Randwick. It is useless trying to mislead the public by telling them that on the part of the men it was a twenty-four hours ultimatum … The head man at Randwick had been studying and advising all the foremen of the different methods used under the noted Taylor system in America. That system is one for skinning the workers as close as possible. If the gentlemen at the head of the railway department, instead of trying to sweat the workmen, would look at the higher paid men — those drawing over £1500 a year — and cut down their wages, they would be doing some good to the country … The government talks of saving money in the department. How can it be sincere when it introduced a new system of railway control which involves the appointment of Mr Cann at £1500 a year, which sum is to be raised to £1800 after the war? Why impose that extra burden on the railway system, already in debt and not paying? Has Mr Cann any great ability as a railway commissioner? You know well he has not, but it is a soft job for him in return for his political services.[14]
On August 19 there was an enormous demonstration of strikers and sympathisers in the Sydney Domain at which Brookfield gave an inspiring address in protest against the arrest of three strike leaders (on charges of conspiracy to incite members of the public service to refuse to fulfil their “duty”). Wives of strikers marched from the Domain to Parliament House. A deputation of them met the acting premier who hectored them:
“The strikers are being led by men who are not only enemies of the government, but friends of the enemies of the empire; who would take away all your privileges, devastate your homes and make you the servile slaves of the Kaiser, instead of keeping you a free people under the flag of old England.”
The English government wanted the supply of Australian heroes maintained at all cost; the New South Wales and federal governments worked hard to crush the general strike and the antiwar sentiment. The leaders of the Union Defence Committee were jailed for conspiracy, coal stocks and transport were commandeered, gas and electricity were rationed, and the jobs of “Enemies of the British Empire” were given to “volunteer Empire Loyalists”. The railwaymen stayed on strike throughout August and the first week of September but destitution forced them back unconditionally on September 10, whilst the seamen continued on strike until October 8.
The National Party spitefully made the Industrial Workers of the World pay with its life for the general strike. Neither the harsh sentences on the twelve nor the Hughes government’s proscription of the organisation as illegal had lost the Wobblies members or support. In July 1917, therefore, and perhaps in preparation for the introduction of “Americanisation” in New South Wales, the Hughes government passed amending legislation introducing a penalty of six months hard labour for membership of the Industrial Workers of the World. Thus in September, with indecent haste, while the general strike continued, the Wobblies were sentenced en masse to six months hard labour at the Sydney Central Police Court. At length public reaction was aroused by the six-month sentence imposed on Brookfield’s close friend Monty Miller, who was eighty-six years old. He had come to Sydney to speak against conscription and continuation of the war. Brookfield appealed vainly on his behalf in view of his age and public service, to Attorney-General Hall. Thereafter sentences were varied, but for the time being the Industrial Workers of the World had been crushed.[15]
So the general strike petered out, but for hundreds of workers there was no return to work. The “volunteers” were in their jobs. Brookfield attacked the government for this vindictiveness, for employing unfit men to drive trains, and for their scurvy treatment of the “volunteers”:
“We were assured that the government would not victimise men. We are to have an industrial bill introduced by the minister for labour. We know that that is only another method of hobbling and manacling the workers. What is the use of arbitration when those scabs … who were sent to the coal mines … to work for 15 shillings a day and free beer are today sending a deputation to the … Miners’ Association asking it to interfere and get for them a square deal with the government and the mineowners? That is some news for you! The men whom you put in houses up there, to whom you were singing songs … the men to whom you took your womenfolk to wait upon them, are now appealing … for a fair deal because the government is so sweating them that they cannot make a living. These men forfeited all they had; they forfeited their manhood, their principles, left the class into which they were born, in order to curry favour with you, and now they are being turned out like dogs. You persuaded them that they were props of the empire and told them that if they did not go and get coal they would be regarded as pro-Germans; and now, immediately they have served your purpose, and you have finished with them, you put the leather into them … It will be a lesson to them that scabbing does not pay … A man who scabs, no matter to what party he belongs, is a thing too low to be allowed to crawl about the earth.[16]
Prime Minister Hughes now had the general strike as a propaganda weapon, the Wobblies silenced and the broken New South Wales unions presumably exercising little political influence over the demoralised workers. On November 7 he announced that the federal government would hold another conscription referendum. In the further hope of cutting down the no vote his government disqualified from voting electors of “enemy” origin and their children. This campaign was even more bitter than it had been in 1916 and even the wording of the ballot papers was biased. A characteristic piece of conscriptionist propaganda was published under the heading of “The Anti’s Creed”. In this notorious leaflet Brookfield and other anti-conscriptionists were singled out for the vilest insinuations.
The anti’s creed
I believe the men at the Front should be sacrificed.
I believe we should turn dog on them.
I believe that our women should betray the men who are fighting for them.
I believe in the sanctity of my own life,
I believe in taking all the benefits and none of the risks.
I believe it was right to sink the Lusitania.
I believe in murder on the high seas.
I believe in the IWW.
I believe in the Sinn Fein.
I believe that Britain should be crushed and humiliated.
I believe in the massacre of the Belgian priests.
I believe in the murder of women and baby killing.
I believe that Nurse Cavell got her desserts.
I believe that treachery is a virtue.
I believe that disloyalty is true citizenship.
I believe that desertion in ennobling.
I believe in Considine, Fihelly, Ryan, Blackburn, Brookfield, Mannix, and all their works.
I believe in egg-power rather than man-power,[17]
I believe in holding-up transports and hospital ships.
I believe in general strikes.
I believe in burning Australian haystacks.
I believe in handing Australia over to Germany.
I believe I’m worm enough to vote No.
Those who don’t believe in the above creed will vote Yes.
A Vote No leaflet responded:
The blood vote
“Why is your face so while, Mother?
Why do you choke for breath?”
“0h I have dreamt in the night, my son.
That I doomed a man to death.”
“Why do you hide your hand, Mother?
And crouch above it in dread?”
“It beareth a dreadful brand, my son,
With the dead man’s blood ’tis red.”
“I hear his widow cry in the night, I hear his children weep.
And always within my sight, Oh God!
The dead man’s blood doth leap.
“They putt the dagger into my grasp,
It seemed but a pencil then,
I did not know it was a fiend agasp,
For the priceless blood of men.”
"They gave me the ballot paper,
The grim death-warrant of doom,
And I smugly sentenced the man to death,
In that dreadful little room.
I put it inside the Box of Blood
Nor thought of the man I’d slain,
Till at midnight came like a whelming flood
God’s work — and the Brand of Cain.
Oh little son! Oh my little son!
Pray God for your Mother’s soul,
That the scarlet stain may be white again
In God’s great Judgment Roll.”[18]
On Wednesday, November 14, the Barrier miners opened their second anti-conscription campaign. Brookfield's friend J.J. O’Reilly chaired the meeting because Brookfield was speaking in Newcastle, but he sent them a telegram promising to join them by Saturday. True to his promise Brookfield arrived on Saturday and the Barrier Daily Truth hailed him as “General” Brookfield. Thousands of people again flocked to hear him berate:
… the most heartless band of bandits the world had ever seen. The war makers had dragged the word patriotism through the mud while they, the long-range patriots, never got further than the railway station.[19]
He commented on the irony of men of peace being forced to hold their tongues while those who screamed to kill more and more Germans increased in popularity. He again attacked the wealthy, who demanded that workers risk their lives for the soldier𔄩's pittance of six shillings a day. He deplored the fact that Australia had sent so many men overseas that there was no one left to defend her own shores, saying Australia could now be defended anywhere but in Australia herself.
Men such as Sir William Irvine, who was so cold-blooded he was known as Iceberg had stated that single men between twenty and forty-four years of age would be sent to the trenches, but wealthy men like Irvine, Brookfield said, would not come forward and say that when you have risked your life for your country there will be a good living in the country for you.
Despite the shouting from men such as Hughes that Europe needed help from Australia, and despite massive starvation in Europe, all last year’s production of wheat, wool, butter and frozen meat was, he continued, still in storage.
Again Brookfield deplored the “unscrupulous tactics” of the New South Wales government and its railways commissioners in “conspiring” to aggravate a general strike so that men could be forced by destitution to enlist. There were men, he indignantly proclaimed, who because they had struck against the iniquitous card system, had been sacked after fifteen or twenty years of service and told they would never be employed again.
He also spoke at Parramatta, Bathurst, Narromine, Dubbo, Nyngan, Cobar and at smaller stations along the same railway line. At other meetings in Broken Hill he argued:
If the nation is fighting for its life, why is it that all the rich people, for whom the workers are asked to risk their lives, do not throw in their riches instead of lending them to the government at a high rate of interest?
The only true patriots are the men of the working class who have gone into the trenches, and not the loud-mouthed soolers-on, who are making profits out of the sufferings of others and demanding their 5 and 6 per cent for money lent to the government to continue the war … The sooner peace is declared the better for the working class whose men provide 95 per cent of the cannon food, and whose women supply 95 per cent of the tears and heartaches. If the peace terms were placed before the people of England, and the Northcliffe press suppressed for a month, the war would fizzle out.[20]
He embarrassed a number of the Parliamentary Labor Party by making similar criticisms later in the house:
It is a very bold thing to stand on a platform and say, ‘We are going to crush the Kaiser’. That carries a lot of weight with unthinking people, but when you come down to bedrock you find that the people who make those remarks are increasing their banking accounts every day. Those who howl loudest about patriotism have the biggest banking accounts. Patriotism pays.[21]
Among those who helped to turn the tide against conscription was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr Mannix. Brookfield once testified before a vast audience in Sydney Domain that he himself was an atheist. Nevertheless, he said on the hustings when first standing for Parliament: “I do not care what religion a man has; I will respect it.” True to his word, he uttered the following defence of Mannix, whose courageous stand had been maintained despite a torrent of abuse:
All he did was to commit the unpardonable sin of being an anti-conscriptionist, and using all the influence he had to defeat the military caste in Australia. I think from that standpoint alone, not knowing the man and never having seen him, that any freedom-loving man in this country should lift his hat to Dr Mannix for the stand he took against the military caste … Honorable members of parliament must understand that the Sinn Feiners are demanding the self-determination for small nations, which Great Britain promised them.22
In case the conscription referendum went Hughes’s way — if it ended in “atrocity” as Brookfield termed it — he began reorganising their anti-conscription organisation, Labor’s Volunteer Army, to help the workers to fight against conscription. In his fight to stop the upper class shipping workers off to war, his courage was endless. However, his originality and audacity annoyed a number of the more conventional Labor Party men who opposed conscription but were not antiwar, including, it seems, John Storey, and the party wits derogatively nicknamed his organisation the “Blackhands”.
Whatever tactics Brookfield had planned for defying the state were never put to the test, for on December 20, 1917, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia voted No. Out of a total of 2,196,906 voters there was a No majority of 166,588. Prime Minister Hughes said he would never forgive those who voted against Australia doing her duty.
The New South Wales parliamentary Labor Party then set about preparing a censure motion against what they saw as the failings of the Nationalist government. The motion was launched in parliament at the end of January, 1918. The highlight of the debate in the house was Brookfield’s withering blast against the National Party for its zest to continue the War and to send more heroes to their deaths, for its support for profiteers and for Hughes’s wartime repression:
Take the Nationalist Party how you like. Take it in South Australia with its infamous land scandals, with its minister who stoops to rob the repatriation fund of money which was appealed for with a pious snuffle and which was contributed by a generous public to provide our returned warriors with a home. These Nationalist ministers are part and parcel of the flag-wagging party which is in power in Australia today. Take the secret coal contract entered into by this state, which, to say the least of it, smells, take the pledges entered into by the federal government, and I submit that title Nationalist Party throughout the length and breadth of the country stands disgraced in the eyes of the people. Some honourable members have gone so far as to say that now that this country has turned down conscription, we are humiliated and disgraced in the eyes of the world. The only degradation suffered by the people of Australia today is that, with a full franchise, they have an infamous gang of people in power who have so little sense of public duty …
Mr Speaker: “Order! … The honourable member must address the house in parliamentary language. I have allowed him considerable latitude, but if he continues to use such language I shall have to ask him to discontinue his remarks.”
Brookfield: “With the limited amount of education I have, and a rather unready tongue, it is difficult for me to express my opinions in guarded language.”
Mr Speaker: “I cannot allow the honourable member to express his opinions at all if he cannot express them in a parliamentary manner.
Brookfield: “Very well, I shall leave the Nationalist Party for a while and deal with a subject which is, perhaps, not quite so contentious and which will, perhaps, not provoke any more remarks from the Speaker or any other honourable member. [23]
Brookfield then dealt with the bogus promises of the government:
The lot of the workers is infinitely worse today than when those men went away … Various promises were made before the men went away, but those have not been fulfilled … I shall be sadly disappointed if these men do not demand the right to a decent living in the country for which they have been fighting, and if they are not given what they are fairly entitled to, it is my sincere wish that they will organise and take it.[24]
He switched to the debasement of justice in the case of the persecuted and imprisoned members of the Industrial Workers of the World:
“I come to some of the things which are done under the War Precautions Act … Our vaunted courts of law, instead of being temples of justice, are turned into dens for the government to vent its spleen on its political opponents.[25]
He attacked profiteering and the prevalence of corruption:
You are asking the people to pay three shillings per ton extra for coal, and now you are going to further exploit them through the medium of the gas companies. The dilatory, I might almost say cringing, manner in which this state government approaches these monopolists calls for censure if nothing else does. The government seems to be afraid to speak to John Brown or any of these monopolists. It seems to be doing everything it can to put more wealth into the pockets of the rich men. Rumor says that there is more than one getting a cut out of this, but I am generous enough to believe that some members of the cabinet, at any rate would not be guilty of such an act.[26]
Passing to the question of the war, Brookfield went on:
The man who, knowing these things would go and fight, has a different outlook on life from that which I have. I tell you honestly that as long as there is one man victimised in this country, as long as there are soldiers’ wives who cannot get enough to live on, as long as there is one man in Broken Hill not getting a decent living wage, I refuse to shed a drop of my blood for this or any other country.[27]
1. NSWPD, Vol LXXI, 694
2. NSWPD, Vol LXIX, 2278
3. Barrier Daily Truth, July 27, 1917
4. NSWPD, Vol LXVII, 105-106. The “ban” to which Brookfield refers was the court order to comply with the War Precautions Act for twelve months.
5. ibid, 106
6. loc cit
7. ibid, 109
8. NSWPD, Vol LXIX, 2279-2280
9. Frederick Taylor was an engineer who pioneered the so-called “scientific” approach to industrial productively. Taylor believed that the appropriate series of rewards and punishments, and a clear separation of the management function from the workplace could “maximise” the output of each individual worker. He was the pioneer of time and motion studies, an important aspect of “scientific management”.
10. NSWPD, Vol LXIX, 437
11. loc cit
12. loc cit
13. NSWPD, Vol LXVII, 508
14. ibid, 506. Whether Mr Fraser and Mr Cann were effective railways commissioners is not at issue. These allegations are included to indicate a historical situation: the attitude of Brookfield and his Broken Hill supporters at a time of intense class conflict.
15. Hughes’s attitude to justice for his political opponents showed when the Wobblies had served their time. In June 1918, the New South Wales Labor Party requested Premier Holman to release the Australian-born, and release to interment pending deportation those of non-Australian birth. Over the following year an unhurried Holman sent Hughes six reminders that the Wobblies were due for release, but Hughes sent him no reply.
16. NSWPD, Vol LXIX, 2280.
17. The reference to egg-power refers to a famous incident at Warwick, Queensland. The Premier of Queensland, T.J. Ryan, headed a Labor administration and was strongly against conscription. He wrote an anti-conscription article. Hughes refused to allow it to be sent in the post. A week later at Warwick, Hughes was addressing a conscription meeting when an egg was thrown, smashing against his top hat. Hughes twice ordered Sergeant Kenny, of the Queensland Police, to arrest the egg-thrower. Sergeant Kenny declined, saying: “I am employed by the Queensland government, not by the federal government.” On his return to Canberra Hughes set up the Commonwealth Police.
18. W.R. Winspear, The Blood Vote, unpublished manuscript held in the Mitchell Library, Sydney
19. Barrier Daily Truth, November 19, 1917
20. Barrier Daily Truth, November 26, 1917
21. NSWPD Vol LXIX, 2278-2279
22. NSWPD, Vol LXXIX, 202
23. NSWPD, Vol LXIX, 2272
24. loc cit
25. ibid, 2281
26. loc cit
27. ibid, 2285