Page Text: Featured Articles : Make Mabo Day a Public Holiday
Make MABO DAY - 3 June -
an Australian Public Holiday
Take a holiday on June 3rd to celebrate a great Australian, Eddie Mabo, who overturned the two century fiction of Terra Nullius in a ten year campaign through the courts ending in the historic High Court Mabo Judgement.
June the 3rd marks the anniversary of Mabo Day, a day that has important ramifications for Australian Society. Mabo Day is a day that is virtually unknown and ignored by most Australians.
On the third of June 1992 the High Court of Australia rejected the ridiculous notion of "Terra Nullius", that this land was not occupied before European colonisation. Eddie Mabo a Torres Strait man born on Mer in the Torres Strait and living in Townsville in Queensland conducted a ten year battle through the courts that led to this historic judgement. The Mabo Judgement states in law that indigenous Australians have by prior occupation, ownership of land where native title has not been extinguished.
Last year on the tenth anniversary, Eddie Mabo's widow, Bonita Mabo, called for a national public holiday on the anniversary of the High Court's decision. Mrs Mabo said Eddie Mabo would be singing and dancing in delight over the progress made. "He would be dancing and singing - I can see him doing it," she said. "It's going to be a long time but at least we're starting to get somewhere which is great. Since '92 there was nothing like this around and you know people couldn't say, 'oh this is my land, this is my country, I'm a traditional owner', which makes them so proud of who they are." Mrs Mabo said a national holiday would be the most appropriate way of celebrating Mr Mabo's efforts. "You know we don't have to have the Queen's birthday weekend."
Show respect. Take a holiday on June 3rd to celebrate a great Australian. Why not organise a picnic of your family, your friends, your relatives, your colleagues. Take the day off work and celebrate the achievements of Eddie Koiki Mabo in overturning 'Terra Nullius'. There is still a long way to travel with regards to Native Title, but Eddie showed that individuals can successfully change the course of history.
Image: Photo of Eddie Mabo, superimposed
on the Torres Strait Islander flag
(in use since 29 May 1992)
Mutualism & Benefit Societies
In Recovering Our Roots: Mutualism, Mutuals and the ALP Dr Race Mathews argues for the Australian Labor Party to look to its roots and adopt policies friendly to Mutualism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the discrediting of State Socialism, this is part of a reappraisal of socialist and social democratic vision taking into account libertarian currents such as Mutualism overshadowed by Marxism/ Leninism. In Mutuality Dr Bob James gives a a brief history lesson on the origin of Friendly Societies and Trade Unions, and presents a critique of the demutualisation debate. See also:
The Tragedy of Labour History by Bob James for a more detailed examination of the exclusion of mutualism from official Labour History.
Secret Handshakes and Health Care in Australia , by Bob James, provides us with the story of the spread of health care throughout Australia through the efforts of ordinary working people. The story of Friendly Societies, in this case the Grand United Order of Oddfellows, is a remarkable story of mutual aid which for too long has been ignored by labour historians.
Secret Societies and the Labour Movement and The Knights of Labor and their context continue Bob's thesis. The excellent display that Bob James prepared for the 1999 Australian Labour History Conference on Secret Society Paraphenalia is now available.
Famous quotes:
Malcolm Fraser on history: "One of the hardest things for non-indigenous Australians to understand, especially the older generation, is that the history - if we were taught any history about early settlement days in the early centuries in this country - was not particularly accurate. The history we were taught, that we were led to believe, is not what happened."
Malcolm Fraser, Former Prime Minister 1975-1983
From History Dictates that we say sorry - The Age 04-05-2000
Julie McCrossin (Australian Radio & TV presenter/journalist) "Historical perspective is essential for anyone interested in social change. You need a sense of yourself as part of a tradition of dissent and agitation in order to develop a realistic set of expectations."
Older items:
2 October 2002 - Short biography of Marie Pitt (1869-1948), a poet, socialist, early feminist, ecologist and anarchist.
Against Terrorism, Against War is an index of articles that document the peace movement in Melbourne after the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001.
18 August 2002 - The successful Free Speech campaign in Brisbane during 1982 and 1983 is well documented by Ciaron O'Reilly.
9 August 2002 - John Englart continues the story of Anarchism in Sydney in documenting the split in the Jura Books Collective during 1982, then details Anarchism in Sydney 1982-2002 , the story of the two anarchist bookshops, Jura Books and Blackrose. This year Jura Books has been going for 25 years and Black Rose for 20 years. In Rebel Worker and Accountability John Englart examines the 20 year history of Rebel Worker, initially the paper of the Australian IWW, then of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation, and presently of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Network.
New in the biography section: Richard Curlewis , a life long advocate for workers' control.
New on the anarchist gatherings site: a report of the 1966 Australia and New Zealand Anarchist Conference , a flyer for the Community Action - Self Management Conference in Melbourne in 1972, and a report of the 1999 anarcho-syndicalist conference in Melbourne .
1 August 2002 - Historical Overview of Anarchism in Melbourne pulls together many of the stories and people involved in the anarchist movement in Melbourne over the last 110 years. 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 other major anarchist current in Melbourne 1970 to 1975 was what was loosely termed ' carnival anarchism ', which includes the stories of the Collingwood Freestore and Australia's first free Legal Aid Service.
23 June 2002 - Picket Line Despatches from the Joy Mining Machinery Dispute, 2000 by Rowan Cahill is an important chronicle of this dispute, which highlighted the neo-liberal agenda for attacking workers, their conditions, and union organisation.
Online Books and featured pamphlets have moved to their own index page.
20 June 2002 - Julian Ripley & the 1971 Labour & National Service Bombing in Perth tells how easy it is to get verballed and railroaded to prison for something you didn't do. Did the present WA Minister for Health, Bob Kucera, frame Julian 30 years ago?
11 June 2002 - The Bibliography of Anarchism & Syndicalism in Australia and Aotearoa / New Zealand by Michael Vaux is a useful resource for researchers in this area.
10 June 2002 - Revised edition of Craft, Trade or Mystery by Dr Bob James released. An important work on the origins of Trade Unions as part of a broader movement of benefit societies.
5 June 2002 - In 1916 two Australian wobblies were executed for the murder of a police constable. The Tottenham Tragedy is their story. Another IWW member, Pat Mackie, played a pivotal role in the Mount ISA Dispute of 1964/65 .
9 May 2002 - The Radical Tradition website is now archived by the National Library of Australia in their Pandora archive of electronic publications. It is indexed under the History category at: http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-24886
From Resurgence to Insurgence - Sydney Anarchist & Autonomist Conference to be held 27-28 April 2002. A resurgence of anarchism is also occurring across the Tasman in Aotearoa, see 2001: An Anarchist Odyssey , an anarchist conference held in Christchurch October 2001.
Two people added to the biography section include Antonio Jimenez (1935-1990), a Spanish emigrant to Australia who became an Anarchist; and John Flaus - radio, stage and screen actor, film critic, academic, journalist and....philosophical anarchist.
In Origins of the Hunter Labour Movement Dr Bob James presents local labour history of Newcastle and the Hunter River in an exciting and varied format, which "allows the movement to grow out of working people's lives, as it did in practice".
Sydney's Libertarian Push has had an extraordinary impact on Australian culture and society. A diverse range of people passed through the parties, pubs and meetings. Darcy Waters "was an icon of freedom and rebellion for Sydney's weekend warriors, people who couldn't or wouldn't embrace a life of permanent protest." Germaine Greer is perhaps the most famous Australian anarchist, although she is better known for her radical feminism and counterculturalism. Jack 'the Anarchist' Grancharoff has been a fixture around the anarchist scene in Sydney since the 1950s.
Federal election 2001; compulsory voting; a choice between tweedledum and tweedledee. The Direct Democracy not Parliamentary Rule Index presents some of the history and arguments against voting and parliamentary democracy from a libertarian/anarchist perspective. Read about the Anarchist anti-election campaign - 1998 or how in 1987 a voter took direct action . A strong anti- political stance was adopted by the direct actionist Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). Two articles are featured by veteran Wobbly, Monty Miller , who articulated Politics and Parliament and The Passing of Parliament .
A biography of Bernard O'Dowd , who saw grave problems in Federation and wrote a clause by clause critique of the draft Federal Bill.
Conference reports on the 1998 Direct Action Jamboree , plus Conferences and gatherings during 2001 in Melbourne (April), Sydney (July), and Wollongong (August).
Art's Alternative Tradition is a virtual tour that deals with society's aspirations and discontents as perceived by artists such as Noel Counihan and admired counterparts inluding Goya, Charlet, Daumier and Kollwitz. Virtual tour put together by art historian, Robert Smith.
John Olday was a council communist, cartoonist and artist who contributed to the anarchist movement in Germany, England and Australia through a range of strategies and his talents as a graphic artist and cartoonist. John Olday in Europe portrays his early and later life. John Olday in Australia contains his memoirs of nearly 20 years in Australia.
Harry Hooton (1908-1961) was a poet and philosopher ahead of his time. He was part of the Libertarian Push in Sydney during the post WW II years, with connections to Angela "Annie" Westbrook of the IWW and many of the poets and writers active in Australian Literature of the time. The anarchist philosophy he developed was anarcho-technocracy and The Politics of Things , which are prescient pieces of writing on anarchism, technics and society, still relevant today.
Latter Day Witches is the first chapter of Dr Bob James 1986 book, Anarchism and State Violence in Sydney and Melbourne 1886-1896 on the formation of the Melbourne Anarchist Club on May Day 1886 and the impact of the Haymarket Tragedy on anarchism in Australia. Dr Joe Toscano descibes the origins of Mayday in Australia
Freemasons, Friendly Societies and Trade Unions is a new index containing links to Dr Bob James research on the history and importance of benefit societies and mutual aid. Included are a major new study and two new essays: