The movement and its monument: Victorian labour’s tribute to the eight-hour day

Abstract

The Victorian labour movement's monument to the eight-hour day was proposed in 1889, upraised near the Victorian Parliament in 1903 and moved to a spot outside the Trades Hall in 1923. This article outlines and explains this history. It presents three arguments. First, that the drive to construct the ‘eight hours monument’ grew out of a long-term practice of ‘memory politics’ for industrial gain as well as a more immediate assertion of generational identity. Second, that the monument reflected the weaknesses as well as strengths of the nineteenth-century labour movement: an idealisation of white, male craft workers; a marginalisation of women; an active opposition to non-white workers. Third, that the monument was actively used by the labour movement of the early twentieth century. Those uses reflect increasing tensions and limits; they changed the location, the meaning and the prominence of the monument. This article offers both a cultural history of the monument and a wider exploration of the connections between monument-building and social movement mobilisation.