Labour History and Cultural Studies

Abstract

In the early 1960s a group of historians led by ANU academics Eric Fry and Bob Gollan formed the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. Its first Bulletin came out in April 1962, and was transformed into the journal Labour History in roughly its current format with the fourth issue in May 1963. Contributors to the Bulletin saw themselves as writing a new and contentious kind of history, especially with its subject matter. Those early issues of Labour History included articles academic, anecdotal, reminiscence on issues such as strikes and riots, unions, employer-union relations, labour and radical organisations, leading labour movement figures, and radical and labour politics, parties, and ideas. Labour history in Australia remains alive and well. The journal that carries that title is flourishing, receiving far more articles than it can print, and with a waiting list of up to two years before publication. Essays dealing with aspects of labour history appear regularly in other journals as well, such as Australian Historical Studies and the Australian Journal of Politics and History. As a review article in AHS by Rae Frances and Bruce Scates in 1993 indicated, publishers continue to produce in abundance books on various aspects of labour history.^he most recent Labour History conference, in June 1993, is testimony in itself, having attracted over 100 papers from historians and activists around the country. Labour historians are well represented in the academy: a large number of academic teachers of history, in Australian history probably the majority, have close associations with it. Labour history is also important for teaching and research in industrial relations and political science, and a significant number of labour historians work in those fields. Now, a third of a century later, where is the enterprise of labour history? How far have historians been able to achieve the aims of its founders, and have or should they have new aims?