In November 1975, the elected Labor Party government of Australia was sacked without notice by Sir John Kerr, the governor-general. Having single-handedly gotten rid of the elected government, Sir John then personally appointed a new government of his own choosing led by Malcolm Fraser and the Liberal Party. The dismissal – or the Kerr Coup as many referred to it – was one of the most dramatic events in Australian history, and ushered in a period of intense social conflict. For the next eight years, Malcolm Fraser’s prime ministership was marked by general strikes, high levels of industrial d ..read more

When the British Empire invaded Australia in 1788, the colony’s new ruling class had a problem – there was no pre-existing working class in Australia waiting around to work for them. Governments and employers could establish all of the farms, workshops, factories and other workplaces that they liked, but without people who had no alternative but to work for them, they were never going to get very far. Aboriginal people had little inclination to spend all day working to enrich white masters when they could simply work for themselves and their communities, and while a vast and dispossessed Engl ..read more

In the 1940s, the Communist Party of Australia was approaching the peak of its power as the largest and most influential left-wing organisation in Australian history. The Communist Party of Australia demanded far more of its members than an average political organisation. To be a communist, you were expected not just to become an activist and an organiser, but to read and study deeply, and to understand often complex theoretical texts. And so with thousands of new members flocking to it, the Communist Party established one of the most ambitious systems of adult education ever seen in Australi ..read more

Wee Waa, in northern New South Wales, is at the centre of the cotton industry in Australia. Tens of thousands of hectares of cotton crops surround the town, which describes itself as “the cotton capital of Australia”. During the twentieth century, each year Wee Waa would see an influx of more than a thousand predominantly Aboriginal workers over summer to perform the vital work of chipping the cotton crops to ensure they weren’t overgrown with weeds. These workers, who the entire town’s economy depended upon, were treated with brutality and intense racism – they were denied any accommodation ..read more

In the late 1960s, thousands of Turkish migrants began moving to Australia as part of a wave of post-World War II immigration that permanently changed the face of Australian cities. For the Australian government and employers, migrants from Turkey and other non-English-speaking countries represented one thing: cheap factory labour that would meekly accept low wages and poor working conditions. Turkish migrants, however, had other ideas. Beginning in the 1970s, Turkish socialists and communists established a series of social centres throughout Melbourne, known as derneks. The derneks encompass ..read more

The Pilbara region of Western Australia is one of the remotest places on the planet. It’s also one of the most economically significant regions not just in Australia, but the world, with almost indescribably vast quantities of high-grade iron ore which power steelworks across the globe and generate tens of billions of dollars in profits ..read more

In the early 1900s, radicals and militant unionists across Australia founded the Industrial Workers of the World, arguably the most legendary left-wing organisation in Australian history. The IWW – or the ‘Wobblies’, as they were colloquially known – believed workers should form unions not just to win better wages and conditions, but to overthrow bosses ..read more

In the decades following the end of the Second World War, Australia witnessed the biggest wave of migration in its history. Millions of people from Asia, Europe and the Middle East immigrated to Australia and changed the demographic makeup of the country forever. Postwar migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds were overwhelmingly consigned to the worst, most ..read more

In 1978, Sydney’s first ever Mardi Gras took place. The Australia in which the parade happened, however, was profoundly different to today. LGBTQI people faced intense discrimination and persecution, with consenting sex between adult men considered a crime and coming out an act that jeopardised employment, housing and personal relationships. Entrapment and violence at the ..read more

In May 1969, Clarrie O’Shea, the secretary of the Victorian branch of the tram workers’ union, was jailed for refusing to pay fines his union had been hit with under Australia’s repressive ‘Penal Powers’ laws. Within a matter of days, over a million workers across the country had gone out on strike. Electricity and gas ..read more