1912 Brisbane general strike

The general strike in Brisbane in Brisbane, Australia in Queensland took five weeks. The occasion for a general strike was the wearing of badges of tram workers ' union, the Australian Tramway Employees Association, while on duty. This was forbidden by the management of the street railway company on 18 January 1912. Then they stopped work and marched to Trades Hall ( Union House ) in Brisbane, there to hold a rally. At the protest event was attended by 10,000 people on the Market Square, today's King George Square, in part.

The Tramway Company from Brisbane, was operated by the General Electric Company, an English company and run by an American Joseph Stillman Badger. When he refused to speak with the Queensland Council of Unions, which was later renamed the Australian Labour Federation, or negotiate, presented 43 trade union organizations a strike committee together, which declared a general strike in Brisbane on January 30, 1912, of up to 6 March. took in 1912.

General strike

During the Brisbane general strike no economic activity could be carried out without the permission of the strike committee, for a permit for work strike coupons were distributed. 500 supervisory union leaders kept order among the strikers and even built an ambulance brigade. Red ribbons were worn as a sign of solidarity and daily parades and demonstrations took place. On the second day of the strike marched more than 25,000 workers to Brisbane Trades Hall. The march was led by parliamentarians of the Australian Labor Party and accompanied by 600 women. The strike of Brisbane spread over a number of regional centers of Queensland. The Brisbane strike committee issued an official strike bulletin with the intention to counteract anti-union coverage in the press.

The Queensland Government responded initially not on the strike. Only when the strike spread to the railways, banning marches, committed police forces Commonwealth military, volunteers and gave bayonets to the police.

Black Friday

An application of the strike committee on February 2, 1912 for a march in Brisbane was rejected by the Police Commissioner William Geoffrey Cahill. Against the rejection demonstrated about 15,000 strikers on the Market Square. The rejection led to the so-called Black Friday, which stands for the reckless use of police batons and police riders against trade unionists and their supporters. Police on horseback rode under the leadership of Cahill into the protesters and put a stick against the demonstrators. Emma Miller, a dedicated 73 -year-old trade unionist and Suffragette led a group of women and girls to the parliament building. There was William Geoffrey Cahill, the highest-ranking police officer of Queensland, on a horse. She took her hat pin and stabbed one on the horse from Cahill, this threw off the police commissioner, whereupon the injured, resulting in a later walking difficulties.

The low- riding and bludgeoning peaceful people, many of them elderly women and children was sentenced not only in union newspapers such as the worker, but also in other newspapers such as the conservative Trust. The Friday was designated initially as Baton Friday ( stick - Friday) and later as Black Friday ( Black Friday ).

The Conservative Prime Minister Digby Denham Queensland realized the strike committee as an alternative government banned all demonstrations and said that it is not to allow an alternative government. When he tried to convince the Federal Government of Australia for use by the military, this was rejected by Prime Minister Andrew Fisher, a member of the Labour Party and a member of the Parliament of Queensland Gympie. Fisher was also called by the strike committee for military aid, but he decided to support the strike by handing over a sum of money.

Denham thought with the Governor William MacGregor troops with a German warship to land on the coast of Queensland, to enforce his ideas of law and order.

Hindsight

When the judge H. B. Higgins of the Federal Arbitration Court of Australia was called to a court decision ruled that that the event was a lockout than a strike more and that the wearing of union insignia was unauthorized and inappropriate by the men of the tram. However, the Judge Higgins was unable to resume work force even pronounce. When the Employers Federation on March 6, decided that no disciplinary actions against the strikers are taken, ended the strike.

The brutal stick use of the police in Queensland and the state forces deployed generated on Black Friday bitterness and hatred of the police, which lasted a long time. The strike reinforced the other hand, the solidarity and collective identity of the workers' movement of Queensland. The conservative government Denham won the short subsequent elections with slogans of " law and order" and adopted the Industrial Peace Act of 1912, which provided for the compulsory arbitration before the proclamation of strikes in the important for the public services.

Denham had the full support of MacGregor, the governor, and he sat after the strike at an election. He lost in Brisbane parliamentary seats, but won in rural areas also votes and returned to the office. Three years later, the Australian Labor Party was elected majority in Queensland. It formed with Thomas Joseph Ryan, a trade unionist and Labour Party politician, the new government. It was the first government, led by a Labour Party in Australia.

The workers of the Tramway Company, which had been active in the strike were dismissed and the tram company refused to hire them after strikers again. Only when the trams were taken over by the State of Queensland in 1922, it came to the reinstatement of dismissed tram workers.

Interestingly, the wearing of union insignia was still prohibited on the uniforms, were performed as trams and buses later than by the government and then by the Brisbane City Council and controlled. It remained banned until the year 1980.