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| He became involved in union activism and was elected Secretary of the Amalgamated Miners'Association of Victoria (AMA) in ]. He was involved in a number of other unions and in ], he was the driving force behind combining a number of unions to form the Australian Workers' Union. Spence assumed the office of Secretary and four years later, President. | He became involved in union activism and was elected Secretary of the Amalgamated Miners'Association of Victoria (AMA) in ]. He was involved in a number of other unions and in ], he was the driving force behind combining a number of unions to form the Australian Workers' Union. Spence assumed the office of Secretary and four years later, President. | ||
| By the 1890s he had become active in the political arena, and was elected to parliament. Spence was a key member of ]'s "torpedo brigade", which organised the Labor caucus in Parliament to vote for O'Malley's ]. He spoke in favor of the "common good," a concept akin to the General Welfare reference in the ]: | |||
| :<small>The masses must not only take a deeper interest in political questions, but they must make the politics of the country. The welfare of the people must be raised to the first place-must be the uppermost and foremost consideration. How best to secure the good of all without injury to any should be the aim- not commercial supremacy, not cheap production regardless of the human misery following, but rather the broadest justice, the widest extension of human happiness, and the attainment of the highest intellectual and moral standard of civilised nations should be our aim....Let each remember that man had failed before because each carelessly left to some other the work of the Common Good. We must reverse that. Each must take his or her share. With unity above all as our watchword, the Common Good our aim, we will soon find common ground of agreement as to the way in which the goal should be reached. The best start we can give to our children is the certainty of better conditions; the sweetest memory of us to them the fact that we did so.</small> | |||
| In a book published in ] entitled ''Australia's Awakening'', Spence wrote that "Unionism came to the Australian bushman as a religion. It came bringing salvation from years of tyranny. It had in it the feeling of mateship which he understood already and which characterized action of one man to another. Unionism extended the idea so one man's character was gauged by whether he stood true to the union - or scabbed it ... Rough and unpolished many of them may be; but manly, true and strong all the time and the movement owes them so much ..." | In a book published in ] entitled ''Australia's Awakening'', Spence wrote that "Unionism came to the Australian bushman as a religion. It came bringing salvation from years of tyranny. It had in it the feeling of mateship which he understood already and which characterized action of one man to another. Unionism extended the idea so one man's character was gauged by whether he stood true to the union - or scabbed it ... Rough and unpolished many of them may be; but manly, true and strong all the time and the movement owes them so much ..." | ||
| ==External Links== | ==External Links== | ||
Revision as of 07:46, 3 November 2004
William Guthrie Spence was the founding father of the Australian Workers Union. He was born in 1846 on the island of Eday in the Orkneys off the coast of Scotland, and travelled to Australia with his parents in 1853. Soon thereafter he witnessed the rebellion at the Eureka Stockade, which is said to have had an important influence on the development of the the young Spence's ideas.
He became involved in union activism and was elected Secretary of the Amalgamated Miners'Association of Victoria (AMA) in 1882. He was involved in a number of other unions and in 1894, he was the driving force behind combining a number of unions to form the Australian Workers' Union. Spence assumed the office of Secretary and four years later, President.
By the 1890s he had become active in the political arena, and was elected to parliament. Spence was a key member of King O'Malley's "torpedo brigade", which organised the Labor caucus in Parliament to vote for O'Malley's Commonwealth Bank. He spoke in favor of the "common good," a concept akin to the General Welfare reference in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution:
- The masses must not only take a deeper interest in political questions, but they must make the politics of the country. The welfare of the people must be raised to the first place-must be the uppermost and foremost consideration. How best to secure the good of all without injury to any should be the aim- not commercial supremacy, not cheap production regardless of the human misery following, but rather the broadest justice, the widest extension of human happiness, and the attainment of the highest intellectual and moral standard of civilised nations should be our aim....Let each remember that man had failed before because each carelessly left to some other the work of the Common Good. We must reverse that. Each must take his or her share. With unity above all as our watchword, the Common Good our aim, we will soon find common ground of agreement as to the way in which the goal should be reached. The best start we can give to our children is the certainty of better conditions; the sweetest memory of us to them the fact that we did so.
In a book published in 1909 entitled Australia's Awakening, Spence wrote that "Unionism came to the Australian bushman as a religion. It came bringing salvation from years of tyranny. It had in it the feeling of mateship which he understood already and which characterized action of one man to another. Unionism extended the idea so one man's character was gauged by whether he stood true to the union - or scabbed it ... Rough and unpolished many of them may be; but manly, true and strong all the time and the movement owes them so much ..."