Political Consciousness and Dissent: The Unemployed in Adelaide during the Depression

Abstract

When the Commonwealth Arbitration Court in January 1931 handed down its unprecedented decision to cut wages by 10%, the union repre sentatives and workers present in the courtroom gathered together and sang the Red Flag. Throughout the room shouts of 'thieves' rang out. Before leaving the court the workers rose and gave three loud cheers for the coming revolution.1 The Depression led many people to believe that social revolution was a very real possibility in Australia. To those left of the Australian Labor Party (A.L.P.) the Depression was a triumphant confirmation and vindication of what they had been predicting for many years?the inevitable collapse of Capitalism. Within the context of the recent revolution in Russia and the widespread poverty of the 'twenties it would have been difficult for leftists to have seen the Depression as anything other than the beginning of the disintegration of Capitalism and the intensification of the class struggle. Throughout the Depression the two revolutionary groups in Adelaide, the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) and the Communist Party, concentrated their efforts on organising the unemployed. They were confident that the inevitable overthrow of Capitalism would begin with the rise of revolutionary con sciousness amongst the thousands of men who had been thrown out of work by the crisis. The revolution, of course, did not materialise and considering the very large numbers out of work there was relatively little disruption of social order. Several reasons can be identified. In the first place, the unemployed themselves wielded no power in the economy. Without jobs they were totally without bargaining power. Furthermore, the unemployed received little support from trade unions. Union member ship declined rapidly as the result of unemployment2 but, more impor tantly, unions demonstrated a strong reluctance to take up the grievances of the unemployed.3 On one occasion members of the South Australian Trades and Labor Council (T.L.C.) spent an anxious night till dawn besieged by angry unemployed men in the Trades Hall. The T.L.C. had refused to support a call for strike action following the arrest of several men during the Beef Riot.4 Throughout the Depression workers and the unemployed were divided by suspicion and hostility. Union officials were fully absorbed protecting the declining living standards of their own members, and the unemployed represented a threat, both to the jobs and to the wages, of employed workers. Even when solidarity existed between