Browse Items · Medievalism in Australian Cultural Memory

The Procession

This article from The Argus newspaper provides a report of an Eight Hours procession through the streets of Melbourne in 1887, during which at least 50 different trades were represented. It makes note of the increasing size and elaborateness of the…

King Working-Man

This illustration portrays the great fear of the establishment in the late nineteenth century in Australia, an organised workforce. Union organisation and affiliation and the strengthening of fraternities and friendly societies appeared to create a…

Tags: Eight Hour Day, Eight-hour day movement, freedom of labour, labour, labourer, organized labour, Peasants Revolt, Premier Gilles, union, unionism, unions, work, worker, working class

Female Servantâ€™s Revolt

This illustration is an early reference to the beginnings of the eight-hour movement. One of the first marches took place in Melbourne in 1856, when the Stonemasons working on the build of the University of Melbourne, marched to Parliament protesting…

Tags: Eight Hour Day, Eight-hour day movement, freedom of labour, labour, labourer, Melbourne, Melbourne 888, Peasants Revolt, revolution, women servants, work, worker, working class

Eight Hour Procession 1901, Sydney

SMH 1901 Mon 7 May Eight Hour Day[1].pdf

The writer credits the craft guilds of medieval England for the eight-hour system, including the Saturday half-holiday. The latter was supposed to be devoted to archery practice, which eventually ensured English mastery of the bow and arrow and their…

Eight Hours Song

Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW) 1898 Wed. 5 Oct Eight Hours Day Song.jpg

Working or labour songs were a feature of nineteenth century (and later) union gatherings and processions. The songs and communal singing evoke peasant or folk traditions. The song gives the workers the high-ground because they resort to moral rather…

Tags: Eight Hour Day, eight hours, Felix McLaren, Knights of Labor, Labor songs, labour, labourer, sabre, Trade Union, trade unionism, union, unionism, unions, work, worker, working class

SA Register 1888 Thurs 26 April Carnival of King Labour

Report on the Eight Hours Day procession in Melbourne in 1888. The article describes the vivid and essentially working-class flavour of the skilled trades procession and after-picnic in Melbourne. The tinsmithsâ€™ knightly armour invokes…

Tags: battle-axes, carnival, carnivalesque, class, Don Quixote, Eight Hours Day celebration Melbourne, Friendly Societiesâ€™ Gardens, King Labour, labour, labourer, medieval guilds, references to Ivanhoe, Richard Coeur de Lion, streets celebrations, tinsmithsâ€™ armour, trade processions, work, worker

Labor Day Procession in Argent Street, Broken Hill

A photograph from c. 1911 of a large crowd lining Argent Street in Broken Hill to watch a Labor Day procession of men carrying union banners. Union banners have a medieval predecessor in the banners used by guilds (an association of craftsmen in the…

Tags: banner, banners, Broken Hill, float, floats, Labor, Labor Day, labour, labourer, New South Wales, NSW, parade, parades, procession, processions, street parade, trade, Trade Union, trade unionism, union, unionism, unions, work, worker, working class

Trades and Industrial Hall and Literary Institute Association of Sydneyâ€™s Illuminated Address presented to Thomas Bavister, 1906.

An illuminated address presented to Thomas Bavister, trade unionist and politician, by the Trades and Industrial Hall and Literary Institute Association of Sydney to recognise his service to the association. Illuminated addresses were a popular way…

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