REVIEW BY JIM MCILROY
To Truly Stand by Each Other: The Eureka Rebellion and the Continuing Struggle for Democracy
By Hamish McPherson
Bookmarks, Sydney 2004
$5 (pb)
"We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties", was the oath taken by 500 miners at the Eureka goldfield, near Ballarat in Victoria, on November 30, 1854.
In early December 2004, a week-long series of events was held in Ballarat to commemorate the historic rebellion at the Eureka Stockade in December 1854, 150 years ago. During many of these events, the spirit of Eureka — rebellion, solidarity and the struggle for democratic rights — was proclaimed as the kind of inspiration the Australian workers' movement urgently needs today.
This excellent pamphlet by Hamish McPherson on the history and legacy of Eureka certainly emphasises this reality. In his introductory chapter, "Why Eureka Matters", McPherson notes: "In December 1854 the gold miners of Ballarat rose up in a courageous revolt against draconian laws and undemocratic government. They were supported by almost the entire working population of the colony of Victoria, who shared their aims — an end to the oppressive miner's licence system and the right for all men to vote in elections ...
"The battle of the Eureka Stockade and the bloody suppression of the miners was the dramatic outcome of a wider struggle between classes about the future of Australian society. Though defeated in battle, the rebellious 'lower orders' rapidly won many of their key demands. Universal male suffrage was granted in the lower houses of the new Australian colonial parliaments, decades before it was achieved in Britain. A defiant spirit of confidence marked the earliest struggles of workers, most notably Melbourne construction workers, who were the first in the world to strike and win the eight-hour day in 1856."
Karl Marx wrote about Eureka in 1855: "Here we see, in essence, motives similar to those which led to the Declaration of Independence of the United States, except that in Australia the conflict is initiated by the workers against the monopolists linked to the colonial bureaucracy."
And the famous American writer Mark Twain, who visited Ballarat in the 1890s, described Eureka in this way: "It was a revolution — small in size, but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for principle, a stand against injustice and oppression ... It is another example of a victory won by a lost battle."
When the colonial troops and police launched their treacherous attack at dawn on December 3, 1854, rapidly seizing the miners' rough wooden stockade at Eureka, with the loss of around 30 lives and many more wounded, the authorities resoundingly won the military battle. But the massacre caused such a huge public outcry in Melbourne, that Governor Hotham was unable to secure any convictions in the ensuing treason trials, and the colonial authorities were soon after forced to grant a number of political reforms, similar to the demands of the Ballarat miners.
As McPherson explains in his pamphlet, the diggers of Ballarat in the early 1850s came from all over the world, including refugees from the Irish nationalist struggle, veterans of the 1848 revolutions of Europe (most famous of which was the Italian rebel and writer Rafael Carboni), former goldminers from the US, and English trade unionists — supporters of the militant Chartist movement forced to move to the Australian colonies by repression and poverty in Britain.
This aspect is taken up by McPherson in countering the attempts over the years to identify the Eureka rebellion with Australian nationalism, whether of the left or far right variety: "The Ballarat Reform League declaration, along with later events, represented an assertion of democratic rather than nationalist sentiment. The miners demanded not national independence but independence or freedom for themselves as a section of the popular classes. The miners' enemy was a colonial state that ruled with the authority of the British crown ... The Southern Cross [flag] flew as a symbol of the miners' unity — a unity that was consciously internationalist."
McPherson also refutes the interpretation of Eureka as a "small business revolt", representing primarily the demand by an emerging Australian middle class for the right to free enterprise and property. "This commentary is based on a superficial analysis of the class position and political aspirations of those involved in the 1854 rebellion", he writes. "It is true that the miners were not wage labourers. They were self-employed — petit bourgeois — often impoverished and with aspirations for advancement. However, they did not form a stable class of business people with purely narrow economic concerns ... [T]he gold rush led to the breakdown and recomposition of class relations ...
"The minority who were lucky enough to strike it rich could achieve social mobility into the middle class, by investing their new capital in land holdings, businesses and early venture capital mining companies. The majority of diggers were not so successful and would at some point leave the goldfields and return to wage labour in the emerging capitalist economy. To this extent many diggers would form part of the working class in formation."
McPherson covers many other aspects of the Eureka rebellion and its aftermath, in a clear and easily readable manner. His pamphlet is a timely antidote to some of the sentimental and de-politicised coverage of Eureka that emerged as part of last year's official anniversary celebrations.
Concluding with a chapter entitled "The Meaning of Eureka Today", McPherson asks, "What can we learn from the struggles of 1854 that is relevant today?"
He explains, "The struggles of 1854 show that Australian society did not develop in a steady, peaceful march of progress. A series of crises and turbulent class struggles has shaped the society we live in today. Australia has a complex history in which there is always a contest between various ideas, material forces, classes and individuals. Throughout there has been struggle; between indigenous people and settlers, convicts and masters, diggers and troopers, women and chauvinists, workers and employers, S11 protesters and police defending the World Economic Forum. The Eureka rebellion belongs to this hidden history of struggle from below, a history that can both inspire and inform us as we meet the opportunities of the present, in an epoch of imperialist war and global resistance."
From Green Left Weekly, March 23, 2005.
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