Labor’s 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
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Transcription, mark-up: Steve Painter
“Nationalism or imperialism never did stand for the workers of any country, but for the privileged few everywhere, and for the oppression and suppression of the workers.”
Brookfield’s four years in parliament had been a dramatic period. His consistency and clarity of line, together with his personal charm, bold leadership and tenacity, had built for him unprecedented prestige with working people. Drawing his political strength from the backing of militant unionists at Broken Hill, he occupied a special position in the politics of the country. There were, of course, persons who sought to disparage his work and these were not only to be found among the conservative sections of the community. Rabid socialist sectarians, for instance, had imputed opportunist motives for his membership of the Australian Labor Party. The International Socialist, organ of the Australian Socialist Party (which later became absorbed in the Communist Party), had on August 2, 1919, attacked him for speaking on behalf of a Labor candidate in an election which was also being contested by an Australian Socialist Party man.
On Monday night March 21, 1921, Brookfield took the night train to Adelaide en route to Sydney. He had been to Broken Hill to perform duties in connection with the Metalliferous Mining Commission. Travelling on the same train was Koorman Tomayiff, a short, thick-set, 37-year-old Russian journalist of morose temperament. He had been a resident of Broken Hill for six years and was known by his neighbours to be something of a radical.
Tomayiff’s behaviour on the journey was odd. He ignored the other thirty or forty people in the compartment. For part of the journey he appeared to stare fixedly at a young fellow passenger, but when asked what he was staring at, he mumblingly replied, “Oh, nothing, nothing.” Although taciturn and silent for most of the journey he once demanded to know when the train would arrive at Riverton station and while asking this he exhibited his one-way ticket. However his oddities were simply regarded as personal quirks for he did not smell of alcohol. No one knew he carried a gun and several extra rounds of ammunition in his leather holdall. No one knew that this disturbed brain had been troubled even more by the death in the previous week of the woman who had lived with him.
By comparison the atmosphere in Brookfield’s compartment was more convivial. Political events were recounted, jokes shared. Everyone looked forward to breakfast in the Riverton refreshment room. When the train eventually drew into Riverton on Tuesday morning there was the usual rush for breakfast places in the refreshment room.
Tomayiff alighted with the crowd. He put his bag on the platform and before anyone was aware of his intention he pulled out a gun and fired five shots along the platform. Within seconds there was total confusion. Screaming and shouting people ran for cover.
One bullet struck a woman in the breast, another hit a man in the leg, a third penetrated another man above the thigh. Two shots ripped through the refreshment room, another glanced off a carriage window shattering its framework.
Tomayiff advanced along the platform firing as he went. When he had emptied his revolver he ran away a short distance, reloaded, and then retraced his steps, firing again and taking shots at anyone he could see. He repeated this process several times, mumbling gutturally to himself all the while. It was estimated that in his initial attack he must have fired at least forty bullets.
Brookfield, taking a pistol from a police constable who was in the refreshment room with him, rushed out to tackle Tomayiff. The pistol jammed. Brookfield tossed it away and continued his rush to tackle Tomayiff.
He caught Tomayiff around the waist. Although the impetus of his attack took Tomayiff by surprise the Russian managed a shot at point blank range. Brookfield received the charge in the abdomen. Though terribly wounded he still grappled with Tomayiff, but he was weakened by the pain and shock of the bullet and Tomayiff had enormous insane strength. Tomayiff broke free and shot Brookfield again, in the stomach. As Brookfield went down, the Russian fired twice more at him.
Encouraged by Brookfield’s courageous example, others rushed at Tomayiff. One man claimed that he hit the Russian with a rifle, another maintained that he used a stone, but it was only after an exceedingly violent struggle that four men managed to get handcuffs on the assailant.
A young locum from Riverton injected Brookfield and he was carried into the brake van of the train, where he was made as comfortable as possible. He continued to be in terrible agony and a second injection of morphia was administered. The station master sent a message through to the nearest big station, Hamley Bridge, requesting urgent medical assistance. The train ran express to Hamley, but there neither doctor nor nurse was available. The only help to be had was in Adelaide. Again the train ran non-stop at full speed.
Brookfield's friends Martin Quigley, Constable Kinsela and Jim Flynn sat at his side comforting hire as best they could. He was conscious the whole time and they were inexpressibly distressed at their inability to help their friend. “I’m settled,” he told them. “For god’s sake give me something to relieve my pain.” He told them he had confronted the gunman for the sake of the women. They urged him not to speak but to conserve what strength remained to him. He bled profusely.
At Adelaide, stretcher bearers moved him quickly into an ambulance, which took him to the Adelaide Hospital. Ten doctors consulted over his condition. When they noted his grazed toe Brookfield made his last wry quip over life’s ironies: “He didn’t hurt my toes much, did he? He wasn't too much of a shot if he couldn’t hit those big feet.” They decided to operate, believing Brookfield had a good chance of survival. Jim Flynn told him that him the prognosis was encouraging. Brookfield simply told him to send a wire to Broken Hill to tell “the lads” where they were.
Flynn hurried out to send the telegram, meaning to return immediately to Brookfield’s side, but he was detained constantly by people who stopped him to enquire about Brookfield's condition. When he got back to the hospital Brookfield was in the operating theatre. He never saw Percy Brookfield alive again.
Brookfield was operated on, but the surgeons could not locate the two bullets in his abdomen and he continued to lose a great deal of blood. Even so, the doctors still felt his chances of surviving were high. They did not know at that time that four bullets, not two, had penetrated his abdomen.
He died later that afternoon.
By 9.15am on the morning of the shooting the people of Broken Hill knew of the events on Riverton station. Crowds gathered outside the office of the Barrier Daily Truth and the Trades Hall waiting for news from Adelaide. J.J. O’Reilly of the Workers Industrial Union of Australia sent two telegrams to Adelaide, one urgently requesting news of Brookfield and the other asking A.E. Edwards MLA, a parliamentary colleague and friend of Brookfield, to arrange any necessary specialist treatment for Brookfield at the union’s expense.
Several telegrams arrived in Broken Hill during the day alternately raising and dashing hopes. The telephones at the Trades Hall and the Barrier Daily Truth rang all day as people anxiously inquired about Brookfield’s condition. At 3.30pm the Adelaide Hospital superintendent wired: “Brookfield’s condition serious. He was operated on this morning.” Those who waited in the street continued to hope that he would live, until shortly after 6pm when the Barrier Daily Truth received the tragic message: “Brookfield died just after 5.30 this evening.”
A sigh of sympathy was all that was heard at first. Then one member of the Workers Industrial Union broke the silence, “We have lost our greatest friend.” On Wednesday morning the Barrier Daily Truth headlined Brookfield’s death.[1] Underneath the headline was printed the first verse of his signature song, The Red Flag:
The workers’ flag is deepest red
It shrouded oft our martyred dead
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold
Their life’s blood dyed its every fold.
The chairman of the Workers Industrial Union requested Jim Flynn and A.E. Edwards to make arrangements to have Brookfield’s body embalmed and brought home to Broken Hill, and Edwards telegrammed back:
Jim Flynn and l will bring body to Broken Hill tonight.
That evening a great crowd gathered at the Adelaide Railway Station to see Brookfield’s body entrained. The Adelaide Labor Party leader Lionel Hill MLA, later to be premier of South Australia, sent a telegram to Broken Hill saying:
We paid our last respects to poor Percy Brookfield at the train. Please convey my deepest sympathy to all in Broken Hill at their great loss. Mr Brookfield lived and died a man.
The coffin lay in state in a van at the front of the train. It was covered by the masses of wreaths that had come in from friends throughout Australia. Early on Thursday morning thousands of people gathered at the Broken Hill Railway Station to pay their respects to the body of their hero. It was the first stage of one of the most massive and moving funeral ceremonies ever witnessed in Australia.
As the express crept in to the station the Workers Industrial Union band played The Red Flag. The pall bearers entered the van and lifted the coffin shoulder high. The crowd parted to let them through and many wept. The union band was joined by a second band and to the mournful, dignified strains of The Dead March Brookfield’s body, followed by thousands, was carried to the Trades Hall. The coffin was laid in state and opened so that Brookfield's countenance could be seen. Friends lovingly examined his features to see if they were altered but found there still the same qualities of “honesty and courage”.
Throughout the day people poured into the Trades Hall and filed past the coffin. Men who had known him well quietly wept as they gazed at his body. Some said softly, “Our greatest friend.” An old lady placed a little rose on his breast, kissed his forehead and whispered, “Dear, good man.” Some women knelt and prayed. Others made religious signs over the coffin. On that one day the religious and the non-religious, the conservative and the radical, were united in their shock and sorrow. The Barrier Daily Truth commented:
Mutual feelings of sympathy and sorrow seemed to throw a net of oneness and equality over each and all. Fate has rung down the curtain on the noblest of lives and this afternoon will mark an epoch grand, yet sad, as the people bury their honoured dead.[2]
On Good Friday, March 25, 1921, Brookfield was buried in the Broken Hill cemetery. Of a population of twenty-four thousand in the town, fifteen thousand people followed his coffin to the graveside.
Six black horses pulled the hearse but the usual black plumes on the vehicle had been replaced with flowers bedecked by red ribbons. Red ribbons were fastened to the heads of the horses. A rider on a black horse bearing a red flag headed the solemn procession. Again the band played The Dead March. Members of parliament, union officials, representatives from every Labor organisation on the Barrier headed the procession. The marchers wore red ribbons as a mark of respect for Brookfield's faith and radical principles. Next day the Barrier Daily Truth reported:
The scenes at the graveside will never be forgotten by those who witnessed them. The red flags, the singers, the band, weeping men and women. Men who were thought to be case-hardened by those who knew them well, whom all tears had been knocked out of years ago through hard-battling with the world, wept in a manner generally attributable to women only … As the band played The Red Flag and the song swelled from the thousands of throats all thought of him who laid still in their midst.[3]
The singing of The Red Flag was followed by the singing of Brookfield’s favorite song, Should I Ever Be a Soldier. No religious service was held at the graveside, as Brookfield was an atheist. Instead the obsequies at the funeral were conducted by his closest union friends. Ern Wetherall from the mining department of the Workers Industrial Union said in farewell:
I am today honoured with the sad task of saying these last words of him whom I believe to be the grandest man that ever lived … the greatest champion that the people have ever had … the dearest, closest friend I have ever had … His heart was the best that ever beat in a human breast. There was not a weak link in the great chain of manly principles that were Brookfield’s; there was not a weak spot in his character.
At the conclusion of his speech, Wetherall sobbed brokenly. While Hold the Fort, a song popular with rebels throughout Europe, was sung, Brookfield’s coffin was lowered into the grave. Before its final interment J.J. O’Reilly added his tribute:
The great fight which Brookfield fought is not yet won … but he has left us an example which I believe will be an inspiration. Brookfield’s name will be remembered wherever there is master and slave, wherever the working class rally under the red flag.
Memorial services were held throughout Australia and on the following Monday, March 28, the Barrier Daily Truth paid its last tribute to the memory of Brookfield and his magnificent burial. The headline read: “Vale Brookfield: workers bury their dead”. The front page, with its full account of the “inspiring, impressive and touching ceremony” bore a half-inch black border around it. Broken Hill was in mourning.
Speculation soon began as to whether the affair at Riverton had been perhaps an assassination. Previous bodily assaults against Brookfield were cited to prove that vested interests had plotted his physical destruction. On the journey to Adelaide, Tomayiff had remarked on nearing the Adelaide jail: “You no forget tell judge I get £100 to shoot Brookfield.” Despite these sinister facts, no thorough-going inquiry was ever held.
Because of ordinary peoples’ belief in Brookfield’s capacity to do wonderful things for them, speculation also created a legend that has lasted to this day. During miners’ union campaigns against the Broken Hill companies for better working conditions and a forty-lour hour week, they were locked out for months by the companies. The legend maintains that the companies, by the lockouts, broke a condition of their lease of the mineral-rich area at Broken Hill. Knowing this, Brookfield was on his way to Adelaide to stake a claim to the mines on behalf of the miners’ union. His success would have brought about a revolution in Broken Hill, but only Brookfield could have carried through such a bold assault.
Brookfield had accumulated no personal fortune, having distributed much of his parliamentary salary in unobtrusive private acts of kindness: but as he lay dying he made a verbal will, bequeathing a few pounds and portables to his sister Hetty, of Liverpool, England. He had often expressed a desire to return to England to see his sister, to whom he was deeply attached.
To the rage of a large section of the population of Broken Hill, their capitalist newspaper, the Barrier Miner, continued to sneer at Brookfield after his death, heaping calumnies upon his past and referring to the “obsequies without religion”. Most of the press took a more sympathetic view, even journals that had claimed previously that “Brookie” was a “cold-tooter” and one who would “hide behind women’s skirts”. The Adelaide press published headings such as “Mr Brookfield’s heroism”.
Memorial meetings were held in various parts of Australia, and tributes to Brookfield poured into Broken Hill from working class organisations all over the country. The carters of Box Tank in the remote outback wrote to the Barrier Daily Truth:
Sir, … we desire to express our great regret al the tragic death of the late Mr P. Brookfield. Mr Brookfield was, at the time of his death, engaged in trying to make the conditions better for us, and secure a better wood supply for Broken Hill. He always proved himself to be on the side of the man with his sleeves rolled up. He was kind and obliging, and his death is as much regretted here as in any part of his constituency. We all feel that at the present time no man can so ill be spared by the workers as Mr Brookfield. — E. Gurney, secretary.[4]
The Brisbane Standard praised his absolute integrity:
In this age of working-class betrayal, of compromise and timidity on the part of many working-class representatives, both political and individual, Brookfield’s unbroken record of unswerving honesty and adherence to the higher principles of the Labor movement stands out in striking contrast to that of many other less scrupulous and courageous leaders … There is no man in the whole Labor movement of this country that could be so ill-spared as Percy Brookfield.[5]
The Industrialist newspaper of Newcastle wrote within a black border under the heading: “Gone”:
Percy Brookfield is dead. Shot by a maniac, big-hearted genial Jack is no more. Thousands of men and women will miss him. A natural leader of men, the advanced Labor movement has lost its best fighter and mourns the loss. There is no sorrow more deep than that of the Industrialist.[6]
A returned soldier sent his deepest sympathy at the sad news:
I feel as though a brother of mine has gone. The workers of Sydney just loved to go on Sunday to the Domain when he was there. I don’t think we can replace him … Mr Brookfield politically, individually, personally and industrially stood absolutely on his own.
One mourner wrote in verse:
There is weeping and wailing today
In the hovels and homes on The Hill
For the big man at rest in the clay …[7]
A.R. Gardiner, member for Newcastle, said in the New South Wales parliament:
He was the same on all occasions, whether in this house or outside it; the same free, manly, outspoken utterances always characterised him.[8]
On the same occasion, M.A. Davidson, member for Sturt said:
He was a man who always spoke his opinions, and his sympathies and sentiments were always with those who needed assistance … This country has lost the best champion the workers of New South Wales ever had … a man who was unique.[9]
Even John Storey, the New South Wales premier with whom Brookfield had clashed so angrily, praised Brookfield’s qualities, saying that his “private life was exemplary”.[10]
In moving that the house place on record its sense of loss, he said Brookfield’s “memory will leave such a mark as will impell young men … to endeavour to emulate him”.
But it was Donald Grant, who owed to Brookie not only his freedom but years of loving and loyal friendship, who wrote his finest and wisest obituary:
Jack Brookfield is dead. Included with all his friends in this part of Australia I find it difficult to realise that I shall never again hear his voice pleading the cause of those who find so few to voice their aspirations and ideas. The big outstanding feature of Brookfield’s life was his sincerity and his disinterested loyalty to any cause which tie believed was right …
And what has been the value of this man's life? I realise that it is impossible to stand beside a nailed coffin and adequately sum up the value of any man. It is only after time has removed all those things which do not count that one can arrive at true values. But this I know, he blazed a new track in the world of politics. His association with the system of legislature as a member proved to him certain things, and without hesitation he told the people what he had learnt. He told the masses just how much and how little they might expect from parliamentary action. Australians rubbed their eyes and beheld an honest politician.
And now this man, whose popularity was as great in Sydney as in the town he represented; this man who was, during the war period, the best hated man in Australia; who was called a coward in every capitalist newspaper, and damned by every hired politician of the master class, is silent in death. And the manner of his death was in complete harmony with the manner of his life. His courage has forced tributes from those who branded him a coward, because he refused to risk his life in a war which he knew was not being fought in the interest of the working class. I pay this, my tribute, unsatisfactory as I know it is, to the man I knew. His loss is my loss; it is our loss, and chiefly, the loss of the whole working class movement.
But the fight goes on. And the best tribute we can pay to his memory is to make the loss up, so far as is possible, by more and better efforts on our part. This, I know, is the tribute he himself would ask of us. It may be said of Brookfield, as was said of another, “He taught us how to live and, harder lesson still, he taught us how to die. Vale Brookfield.”[11]
With the death of Brookfield came the need to find a means of keeping alive the spirit of his work. M.P. Considine, who had been Brookfield’s colleague in many a struggle, suggested that the establishment of a school of socialist politics would be the best form of commemoration. Many agreed that such an institution would be the surest method of perpetuating the tradition of “the man who did not twist”. A committee was set up to organise a memorial school, but the plans were abandoned. Instead, an impressive monument was erected over Brookfield’s grave. The main feature of this structure is a tall column surmounted by a globe on which, appropriately, is engraved the historic internationalist exhortation: “Workers of the world unite”
1. Barrier Daily Truth, March 23, 1921
2. Barrier Daily Truth, March 24, 1921
3. Barrier Daily Truth, March 26, 1921
4. Quotation not located by editors
5. Quoted in Barrier Daily Truth, April 1, 1921
6. Quoted in loc cit
7. “Michael McThirst” quoted in loc cit
8. NSWPD, Vol LXXII 29
9. ibid, 30
10. ibid, 28
11. Barrier Daily Truth, April 1, 1921