Lilian Tiering, in Australia before the 1st World War, when known as Lilian Harris; she did a lot of speaking, was involved in the Women's Political Association and in an election in Kooyong in which the WPA put up Vida Goldstein.
She joined the IWW and was very active. In 1913 she married and left Melbourne for the Sudan, then to Britain (1914/15). In Britain she was very active in Sylvia Pankhurst's WSF, and a founding member of the CP. She was a leading unemployed agitator in the early 20's, for example as editor and founder of the National unemployed workers paper, Out of Work which she built up to a circulation of 50,000.
She left the CP in late 1923 and joined the ILP. She remained active in political life till her death in the early 1960's.
Between the preliminary hearing and the trial of the Westralian 'conspirators', a senior officer of the Statistics Office, William Siebenhaar, was suspended from his post and charged before the Public Service Commissioner with 'improper conduct by manifesting sympathy with the illegal methods of the I.W.W.'
Siebenhaar was 'an academic anarchist', Dutch by origin, a naturalised Australian since 1895 when he had joined the Westralian civil service. In 1907, he had published a long poem, "Dorothea", which was anti-war in sentiment.
When Monty Miller was arrested his daughter asked this anarchistic and poetic servant of the government for help.
It was alleged against Siebenhaar that he had collected money to help with Miller's defence, from his fellow civil servants and in working hours. The Under-Secretary told the Commissioner: 'When they found a senior officer who bore a foreign name, if not German, inviting his fellow servants to sympathise with a man who had been caught red-handed preaching sedition . . . it was no time for hesitation.'
Siebenhaar was able to establish that he had not used the government's time to solicit money for the government's enemy; but the Commissioner still did not hesitate. Siebenhaar had admitted to anarchism, republicanism, and anti-conscription, and he was out.
from Ian Turner's Sydney's Burning.
