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Thursday 24 March 2016

Under the Southern Cross

On 28 November, the Argus commented in its leader:

Canada could not get a British statesman to listen to her grievances till she broke out in rebellion…We must warn the diggers that it is no slight affair upon which they are entering. [1]

The first sentence may have been a warning to the authorities but, if the second was to warn the diggers, it was almost an open invitation to rebel. Two days later, it was clear that neither the authorities nor the diggers had heeded the warnings and the mood in Ballarat hardened on both sides. After the license hunt on 30 November, several thousand diggers, many armed rushed to Bakery Hill. [2] None of their usual spokesmen were present to conduct the meeting. Humffray and George Black had already distanced themselves from the movement and it is unlikely that diggers would have listened to their calls for calm. The leaderless crowd was about to disperse when Peter Lalor took charge calling on the diggers to unite and fight to free themselves from tyranny. Critical in the shift from peaceful protest to direct action was belief in the right to bear arms in one’s own defence.

The concept of self-defence was an ambiguous Common Law right but legal opinion suggested that it did not extend to those who resisted the lawful authority of the state. However, Captain Wise’s untimely parading of his troops on 28 November and especially the clash at the Gravel Pits two days later confirmed the fear of many diggers that the authorities were preparing to use force against them. The miners would have been fully aware that the British government had used troops to deal with dissent and unrest in Britain and in the colonies. It does however seem that it was the prominence of the bayonet in both incidents that aggravated the situation: the bayonet was seen as ‘the iconic weapon of despotic coercion’. [3] Carboni was not alone in expressing his outrage at the threatened use of the weapon:

John Bull…was born for law, order and safe money making on land and sea…he hates the bayonet: I mean of course that he does not want to be bullied by the bayonet. [4]

Hundreds enrolled as volunteers and were organised into companies by Lalor while George Black’s brother, Alfred recorded the names of each division and its captain. The companies were made up of men from all nationalities on the diggings according to the weapons they brought with them. Charles Ross, for instance, took command of the division of men armed with rifles and muskets while Irishmen Michael Hanrahan and Patrick Curtain commanded a division armed with pikes, seen by some as an archetypically Irish weapon and the Prussian Edward Thonen took charge of another company of riflemen. [5] Lalor asked Carboni to tell those without firearms to make pikes. This was not, as some have argued, a reflection of the shortage of firearms among the rebels but recognition of the value of the pike as a weapon for defence. What was important about pikes was that they were easily made and could be used to some effect with little training. About 1,000 diggers with their leaders, Lalor, ‘Captain’ Ross, Timothy Hayes, Frederick Vern and Raffaelo Carboni then marched to the Eureka diggings with the Southern Cross flying before them. [6] This made tactical sense since Bakery Hill was an open, cleared space where diggers could be surrounded by troops from the nearby Camp. Eureka was less exposed.


Charles Doudiet, Swearing Allegiance to the Southern Cross, watercolour

At a meeting of the thirteen captains, Lalor was chosen as ‘commander-in-chief’ with a mandate to ‘resist force by force’.[7] After his election, the diggers began to erect a simple fortification about 200 metres from the remains of Bentley’s hotel. They enclosed about an acre of relatively flat ground with slabs of timber shovelling some earth round the slabs to strengthen them. Once the palisade had been completed, the men who had marched to Eureka, already reduced to 500, marched back to Bakery Hill, the symbolic centre of digger resistance. Lalor and his captains returned to Bakery Hill and as the sun was setting Captain Ross, sword in hand hoisted the Southern Cross. Holding his rifle in his left hand, Lalor mounted a stump nearby and ordered those not prepared to swear an oath to leave immediately, which many did. He then knelt at the foot of the flagpole and with his right hand raised towards the flag, swore in the men who remained:

We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties.

As dusk fell, they took down the Southern Cross and marched back to Eureka. Although they did not know it, the diggers had won the first round of the Battle of Eureka. They had not thrown away their arms or deserted the Stockade, that frail symbol of resistance and returned to their diggings.[8]


[1] ‘Government by Artillery’, Argus, 28 November 1854.
[2] ‘Ballaarat: Serious Outbreak at Ballaarat’, Argus, 2 December 1854, p. 5.
[3] Ibid, Blake, Gregory, To Pierce The Tyrant’s Heart: A Military History of The Battle for The Eureka Stockade 3 December 1854, p. 19.
[4] Carboni, Raffaelo, The Eureka Stockade, (Melbourne University Press), 2004, p. 6, cit, ibid, Blake, Gregory, To Pierce The Tyrant’s Heart: A Military History of The Battle for The Eureka Stockade 3 December 1854, p. 19.
[5] Thonen was German-born Jew from Elbertfeld, Prussia and in 1851 the twenty-three year old was in Britain earning a living as a teacher of languages. Thonen, just five foot tall, travelled about the diggings with a keg as a ‘lemonade seller’, probably a euphemism for sly grog of some kind.
[6] O’Grady, Desmond, Raffaelo! Raffaelo!: A Biography of Raffaelo Carboni, (Hale and Iremonger), 1985, is an good study of this enigmatic figure. In addition to his The Eureka Stockade, it was known that he had published another book about his experiences in Australia in 1853-1855 ­ Gilburna, this book, first published in 1872 had been thought to have been lost until a copy was discovered in Rome in 1990. It throws new light on the forgotten people in the Eureka story, ­ the indigenous inhabitants of the land. Carboni, Raffaelo, Gilburna, translated and annotated by Tony Pagliaro, (Jim Crow Press), 1993.
[7] The thirteen captains included: Lalor, Frederick Vern, Carboni, Edward Thonen, a Prussian who sold lemonade, John Manning, Timothy Hayes, Patrick Curtain who led the pikemen and George Black. It is probable that Captain James McGill and Thomas Kennedy were also there: ibid, Molony, John, Eureka, pp. 129-130.
[8] Ibid, Molony, John, Eureka, pp. 136-137.

Monday 21 March 2016

Another ‘omnishambles’!!

It’s easy to see why George Osborne included the changes in disability benefits in his budget last week.  By adding it to a ‘money bill’, he removed the possibility of the House of Lords, should it have got that far, of repeating its treatment of proposed tax credit cuts.  It’s also easy to see why, following the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith, why they have been abandoned.  This and the debate over Brexit probably now means that George will not succeed David in Number 10…for a significant number of MPs and an even greater number of Conservative Party members and for the broader public, George has now become a toxic brand.  With his reputation as a master political tactician—something I must admit I’ve always believed has been over-stated--now in ruins, he appears to have forgotten one of the most important rules in politics…you can push colleagues so far but eventually they’ll say right I’ve had enough.  For IDS, the change to Personal Independence Payments was that tipping point...the ‘quiet man’ bites back.

At the heart of the resignation is a growing tension within the Conservative Party between those who espouse a liberal Conservative position grounded in market enterprise—what might be called the ‘powerhouse Conservatives’—and compassionate One Nation Conservatives, many of whom were elected in 2010 or 2015, for whom a fair society is at the heart of their thinking.  You might say that George represents the first while David ‘hug a hoodie’ Cameron is more inclined towards the latter.  You could also argue that the reason why the Conservatives have done so well since 2010 is because of the creative tension between the two, unlike the tendentious Brown-Blair relationship.  Cameron had urged the Chancellor to avoid any major controversy in the Budget so as to avoid fuelling discontent among Tory MPs ahead of the EU referendum.  George listened over changing when pensions were taxed but then went for disability benefits presumably without recognising that it was equally controversial. And it could all have been avoided.  I don’t see why there couldn’t have been an uncontroversial mini-budget to keep thinks ticking over until November or until after the referendum.  Could this be a further example of political hubris…a belief in their invincibility?  Well, yes it is.  If you see a potential obstacle in front of you, you don’t march straight into it in the misguided belief that it will simply evaporate. Once the referendum is over George needs to be moved…Foreign Office I think…so that a new pair of eyes can look at the treasury brief if only because he’s been in the job for six years and, as he’s said on several occasions, there’s no Plan B. 

Do we spend too much on welfare and should this be reduced?  Across the political divide there is general agreement that welfare is disproportionately high compared to other areas of government spending and that reductions can be made.  The question is how should this be done and IDS’s resignation has again highlighted the view that the government’s approach is often deeply unfair as it juxtaposes cuts for the majority with tax cuts for the wealthy and that, in IDS’s words, the government is in ‘danger of drifting in a direction that divides society rather than unites it, and that, I think, is unfair’'.’  IDS also criticised the ‘arbitrary’ decision to lower the welfare cap after the general election and expressed his ‘deep concern’ at a ‘very narrow attack on working-age benefits’ while also protecting pensioner benefits.