History Not Shared is a History Lost

My connection to the Australian Workers Heritage Centre at Barcaldine goes back a long way. So, when my good friend and Life Member of the Labor Party, Graeme Watson, suggested I write a commemorative book about Barcaldine and the Heritage Centre, how could I refuse?

But why Barky as it’s colloquially known?

It’s because of its iconic place in labour history.

There are lots of arguments about where the Labor Party began but the outback of Queensland in 1890-93 is the only place in Australia where working people made it happen rather than let it just evolve.

The Queenslanders were saying it shouldn’t only be the well-to-do’s dictating the social environment. It shouldn’t be a Parliament dominated by pastoralists and banks. It shouldn’t be that working people had no voice in Parliament and no say in legislation that dictated their working lives.

They were saying enough of the landowner ‘masters and servants’ mentality, making lots of money from ‘the horny handed sons of toil’ as Charles Jardine Don would have put it. They’d had enough of the beef barons and sheep sheiks looking down their noses at them.

So, centred in and around Barcaldine, those working people formalised a Labour Party and put together a Party manifesto – a set of aims and policies that is now recognised by UNESCO for its historical significance. Folklore has it that the manifesto was proclaimed under the ghost gum opposite the Barcaldine railway station; that ghost gum now known as ‘The Tree of Knowledge’.

While in other states an egalitarian society was slowly taking shape, the Queenslanders were demanding one. The Queenslanders were demanding a People’s Parliament. They argued, why should acres vote? One–man–one–vote and no man more than one vote.

It all happened amid industrial strikes and military insurrection. Those fights served to make it clear that to get rid of that ‘masters and servants’ mentality to be replaced by the ideals of a People’s Parliament could only be won at the ballot box. And it was!

By 1899 almost half of the Members of Parliament were working people, organised as a Labour Party. The party was organised well enough for the Lieutenant Governor of the State to ask it to form Government when the conservatives split over an argument about railway policy. It was the first socialist Labour Party anywhere in the world.

The Australian Workers Heritage Centre at Barcaldine exists to honour and remember those times of Labour History and those horny handed sons of toil who forged the fabric of what is now an Australian People’s Parliament.

This commemorative book is that story still being told because history not shared is a history lost.