Featured Pamphlets

Picket Line Despatches from the Joy Mining Machinery Dispute, 2000....Rowan Cahill
Rowan Cahill's pamphlet is an important chronicle of this dispute, which highlighted the neo-liberal agenda for attacking workers, their conditions, and union organisation.

The Joy dispute is a reminder that ‘old’ trade union notions of struggle, and traditional approaches to organisation and mobilisation, are relevant modern industrial responses. - Rowan Cahill

On Lesbian Separatism - Women wimmin womyn womin whippets....Julie McCrossin
Julie McCrossin's pamphlet challenges the tenets of lesbian seperatist ideas in the women's movement during a visit by Mary Daly to Sydney in the early 1980's. Julie McCrossin in the late 90's has earned fame as part of the panel in the satirical comedy television program Good News Week.

What is this Gay Community Shit? - The Sydney Gay Mardi Gras and the Left....Sasha Soldatow
Sasha Soldatow presents the early history of Sydney's Gay Mardi Gras. In doing so he illuminates the sellout by the 'Gay Left' to gay captalism. New Introduction - March 2001

"...the emerging gay community was dismantling a whole history of radical political action..... Simply put, the whole gay community thing was twaddle; it was a matter of emerging gay capitalists smelling the dollars that could be milked from men's cocks."

Secret Societies and the Labour Movement....Dr Bob James
Contains two essays published for the 6th Biennial conference of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, held in Wollongong, October 1999. In conjunction with the conference Bob James organised a display of historic photographs of banners, certificates, as well as stand up figures and regalia he has collected in his researches. These essays are of value to anyone interested in the origins of trade unions and working peoples organisations. As Bob James sums up in the last paragraph: All lodges, today, are in decline, and the loss of membership of 'trade unions' is just one part of that. At a time when Australian mateship is being denigrated and generational dysfunction is widespread, there is little awareness of what used to tie communities together, what 'solidarity' can mean or how the 'labour movement' built itself in the first place.

W.R. Winspear - Anarchist or Socialist? - An appraisal of a pivotal figure in Australian labour and radical movements of the 1880's and early twentieth century. In this essay Bob James clears some of the historical misconceptions and inaccuracies about Winspear's politics. Winspear published Australia's first regular radical socialist newspaper - The Radical, later renamed The Australian Radical.

The Melbourne Tram Dispute and Lockout of 1990.....Dick Curlewis.
The 1990 tramways dispute is one of many industrial disputes in which rank and file unionists displayed the courage and daring to take control of their working situation. Workers Control raised its head for week or two. In this dispute, like many others, the union bosses sold out their members, through a deal done with the State Labor government. But the real story is how a small group of militants succeeded for a few years in setting the agenda amoung rank and file workers in the public transport industry in Melbourne.

Loaded January 2003
My Union Right or Wrong. A History of the Ship Painters and Dockers Union 1900 to 1932. By Issy Wyner.
This history brings alive the spirit of radical democracy and mateship in the trade union movement in the first decades of the twentieth century. Issy Wyner has thoroughly researched the story of the Ship Painters and Dockers Union through the union minutes - which lets the members of the time tell their story - and many other research sources. It is a valuable resource to present and future historians of the labour movement and radicalism in Australia, and to the social history of Balmain and Sydney.

Now that the Ship Painters and Dockers Union is all but totally extinct, now that its members are scattered to the four winds and the seven seas, now that unionism in Australia approaches extinction as the powerful force for fostering and protecting workers' interests, now that compulsory unionism is fast being replaced by compulsory non-unionism, now that the machinations of Hawke-Keating-Kelty are finding their eventual, logical expression in the Howard-Reith ruthless emasculation of unionism --- it seems appropriate to endeavour to record some of the history of one small brotherhood of workers which did its utmost to foster, improve and protect workers' interests and the essence of genuine unionism.
Issy Wyner - From the Preamble

Loaded August 2002
The Melbourne Anarchist Archives: Drafts and Documents 1966-1973 provides substantial information on the theoretical development of anarchism in Melbourne for the Melbourne/La Trobe current, as well as current issues and debates at the time including: Conscription, Maoism, Anti-war, support for the NLF, student protest, May Day, Workers' Control, the Moratorium movement, Czechoslovakia, Student action for Education.

The object of such a series of publications is not simply that of contributing to the historiography of the Australian left but is rather that of contributing towards the development of the present movement by the critical study of its past. - From the Preface

Loaded March 2001
Craft, Trade or Mystery? Part One - Britain from Gothic Cathedrals to the Tolpuddle Conspirators. by Dr Bob James
A major study into the origins of Trade Unions, Freemasons and Friendly Societies. Understanding this history can contribute to redressing the directions and structure of these mutual organisations, and the directions for society in general.
Download the whole text as a winzip file (304kb) for easy reading offline.

A Reader of Australian Anarchism 1886-1896 ...Bob James (Editor)
This title, published in 1977, presents material detailing that anarchist ideas were widely debated and accepted in the labour movement of the late nineteenth century. It was a ground breaking in detailing the influence of anarchism on the labour movement of the time through Jack Andrews, the Andrade brothers, Larry Petrie, and many others.

Anarchism in Australia. An Anthology 1886-1986 ...Bob James (Editor)
Published in 1986 in a limited edition of 50 copies for the Celebration of the Centenary of Australian Anarchist Organisation, this gives an overview of one hundred years of anarchism in Australia. This gives the anarchist movement an active and proud history in Australia.