This article records some of the history of May Day in the Hunter Region – from the earlier and then concurrent demonstrations of the Eight-Hour Day movement in the 1880s to the grand parades of May Day along Hunter Street in Newcastle in the 1950s and to our most recent celebrations.
It is brief as this article has been limited to the documents and reports held on file by the following organisations: the May Day Committee of Newcastle Trades Hall Council, the workers cultural action committee, the Local Studies Unit of the Newcastle Region Library and the University of Newcastle Auchmuty Library Archives.
It is unfinished, as a wealth of information remains to be collected – from individuals throughout the Hunter, other public libraries, past union journals and newspapers.
I encourage you after reading this article to write down your recollections of May Day or to look for old photographs and newspaper clippings and to donate this information to Newcastle Trades Hall Council to be properly archived and publicly available. Hopefully, we can expand on this article to provide a fuller account of May Day in the Hunter Region.
Steve Wilson
Arts Organiser
Workers Cultural Action Committee
Secretary
NTHC May Day Committee
15/05/02
The first international May Day demonstrations and meetings held in many countries on the 1st May 1890 arose from the increasing need during the nineteenth century to reduce working hours to eight hours per day. A familiar rhyme of the period was: -
Eight hours to work, eight hours to play,
Eight hours to sleep, eight bob a day,
A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.
Such, it is said, were the demands of Australian unions during the 1850s with, as it became known, the 8-8-8 campaign.
In 1856 industrial action by Melbourne and Sydney stonemasons and building workers resulted in what has generally been agreed as the first eight-hour day for Australian workers (Unfortunately these workers were still working a six-day week with an eight-hour day resulting ia forty-eight hour week). In Melbourne, the campaign to win shorter hours had culminated in strike action when workers walked off a number of building sites on the 21st April 1856. Once employers agreed to their demands, to celebrate their achievement, the unions held a procession three weeks later on the 15th May 1856. Approximately 700 people participated and 19 unions were involved. This was the beginning of the Eight-Hour Day march or procession. From 1879 Eight-Hour Day was proclaimed a public holiday in Melbourne and the march continued every year until 1951 (Little 1990: 15).
By 1858, other manual trades such as bricklayers, carpenters and builders’ labourers were granted eight-hour days and the building industry in general recognised the eight-hour day. But the eight-hour day for all employees was not achieved (at least in NSW) until 1916 when the NSW Eight Hours Act was finally passed after eight months of negotiations and debate in parliament. The forty-hour week was not achieved until 1946 when the Federal Arbitration Court committed to the principle of a forty-hour week. Following on from the federal decision, the NSW Industrial Arbitration Act set the standard for working hours at forty a week.
In the Hunter Region the beginnings of the eight-hour day came with a number of miners’ mass meetings in Groves’ Paddock in 1860 and 1861 (James 1993ii: 3). A Miners’ Association was formed and a number of resolutions passed but the movement for an eight-hour day was not sustained.
In Newcastle the first Eight-Hour Day Committee was elected at a meeting in the Bricklayers’ Arms, Lake Road (now Darby Street) on the 12th October 1862. After another meeting on the 29th November it lapsed and was not revived until October 1869 when unionists met in Maitland to campaign for the reduction of working hours in the region from ten to eight. A further meeting was held in November of that year at the Frederic Ash rooms on King St. Newcastle and, as James notes, these meetings were attended “not by miners, but by craft workers, clerks and ‘public men’, that is, men with an interest in public affairs” (James 1993ii: 3).
However, the first Eight-Hour demonstration in Newcastle was not held until 16th October 1883. Notices had been circulated by the Newcastle Labor League to consider holding a march principally as a way of raising funds so that a trades hall could be built. The procession formed at Arnott’s Paddock in Union Street (near the current fire station) in the following order:
Lambton Band…City Fire Brigade with horses and engine festooned with flowers…Eight Hour workmen with banner from Sydney…Shipwrights with a Sydney banner…a Building Trades group…Mr Ritchies’ Wickham Railway Carriage Factory Employees with their own banner…Wallsend Band…the Boilermakers’ Society with banner…a Great Northern Railway Permanent Waymen with banner…and then the general public (James 1993ii: 4).
They marched to Honeysuckle Station and boarded a train for the Crystal Palace grounds at Waratah for sports, games, picnics and dancing. Nearly 3,000 people took part. The Newcastle Morning Herald wrote:
Hundreds of residents – men, women and juveniles – thronged every available vantage point, and as the muster, fully three hundred yards long, slowly filed down towards Blane [ie. Hunter] Street…amid band playing and cheering, the appearance presented was not one to be forgotten readily (James 1993ii: 4).
The parade and demonstration became an annual event for a number of years and set a precedent for how the Eight-Hour Day (and later May Day) should be celebrated. The route did change the following year for the marchers to process along Hunter Street to the racecourse in Newcastle. James offers that the main reason for the change was that all of the tickets sold for the event at the racecourse grounds raised funds for the Eight-Hour Demonstration Committee and their goal of a trades hall for Newcastle (James 1993ii: 5).
At the Grounds, while the banners rested on supports, visitors could buy a cup of tea, a substantial ‘Dinner’, see the sideshows, dance to the orchestra or wander around the stalls. Aided by these attractions and the Sports, the value of the Demonstrations to raise money quickly became clear (James 1993ii: 5).
In his unpublished doctoral thesis “Carnival, Discipline and Labour History”, James also notes that by marching along this route, the Eight-Hour Day procession was in fact making a radical political statement in its time. Unions were symbolically claiming access to the City of Newcastle for its members (James 1993i: 269). The procession marked out the right of entry to the city as we sometimes now see enacted when the Airforce, Army or Navy march through Newcastle.
Stephen and Reeves note that the Eight-Hour Day Procession in Melbourne retained an air of exclusiveness. Only those unions that had gained the eight-hour working day were allowed to participate in the procession (Stephen & Reeves 1985: 8). They argue that it allowed a measure of legitimacy on one hand and control on the other. For example, following the 1887 Melbourne procession a correspondent for The Age in Melbourne wrote:
It is possible to shut our eyes to the fact that a very large number of men and women who belong to the ranks of labor quite as much as the mechanics and artisans that will take part in it, are excluded from it.
(Stephen & Reeves 1985: 10)
An examination of Ralph Snowball’s photographs of early Eight-Hour Day processions in Newcastle shows, to someone looking from one hundred years later, some evidence of the formality of the Eight-Hour Day marches as suggested by Stephen and Reeves. For example, a Newcastle Dredge Employees Float (Eight-Hour Day 1907) depicted a diver in a tank with an air pump, Neptune with a trident and a working model of dredging equipment. A photograph of the Boilermakers Society (Newcastle Branch) preparing for the procession in 1910 shows a number of men gathered in waistcoats, suits and hats. “The pride of the workers’ trade always showed through in the floats that were carefully constructed and presented and in the elaborate banners carried in the procession depicting images of pride in the skills of the individual worker” (WCAC 1985: exhibition notes).
One should note that the formality of the clothes was the dominant attire of the times on these occasions (a brief examination of photographs from May Day in the 1950s and 60s will show union members in suits marching in good drill formation) and that, in Newcastle, at least, many unions that had not achieved an eight-hour day participated in the procession. For example, over 1000 miners marched in 1884 while their negotiations continued for the reduction of their ten-hour day to an eight-hour day (James 1993ii: 6) – miners had been reluctant to participate originally as they were paid by the ton of coal produced not by the hour. The available documentation suggests that the Eight-Hour Demonstration was both a celebration for those unions that had achieved an eight-hour day and a demand for those that hadn’t.
Other evidence also exists of the “informality” or more carnivalesque elements within the Eight-Hour Day Demonstration. James notes that in 1886 and 1887 a ‘Jack-in-the-Green’ (a figure associated with festivities for welcoming Spring) was allowed to unofficially lead the procession. The sideshows mentioned earlier at the racecourse in 1884 included such acts as wrestlers, Cheap Jacks, acrobats and Aunt Sallys (James 1993ii: 5).
While there is a suggestion that the parade began to falter in the years following 1891, a brief examination of the official programs of the Eight-Hour Demonstration Committee for 1903 and 1918 reveals there was still considerable involvement and support for Eight-Hour Day in Newcastle from unions, businesses and the wider community. For example, in 1903 a combined total of eighty-one individuals and businesses donated trophies for the sports events following the procession and over 100 cash donations from, again, both individuals and businesses were received that year. The 1903 program also records advertisers such as Palings (pianos and organs), Cornish Bros (tailors), AF Moore (Cordial manufacturers) and others. Shortly after the first parade took place, Ritchies’ Carriage Works and other firms like Hudson Bros (that had actively supported shorter hours) joined in. In 1918, thirty-seven unions participated in a procession divided into some eight sections – head marshal; miscellaneous; railway unions; waterside workers; iron trades’ group; food supply group; building trades; and, mining group.
Over time, as James notes, the nature of the Demonstration changed (James 1993ii: 6). People complained about its commercial nature and began to look for an alternative. The Eight-Hour Day Demonstration, re-named as Labour Day in NSW, continued in Newcastle until the mid-1920s when May Day celebrations became dominant in the Hunter Region.
On the 14th July 1889, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, an International Labor Conference (later known as the Second International) met in Paris. The USA union delegates told the Conference of their struggle to win an eight-hour day and, in particular, they spoke of an incident at Haymarket, Chicago, Illinois. On the 1st May 1886 (as WT Whitney Jr explains), Albert Parsons, head of the Chicago Knights of Labor, led 80,000 people through the city’s streets in support of the eight-hour day. In the next few days 350,000 workers nationwide (including 70,000 in Chicago) went on strike at 1,200 factories. On the 3rd May, August Spies, editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers Newspaper) spoke at a meeting of 6,000 workers, and afterwards many of them moved down the street to harass scabs at the McCormick Harvester Works. The police arrived, opened fire, and killed four people, wounding many more. The next day, Spies, Parsons, and Samuel Fielden were speaking at a rally of 2,500 people held to protest the police massacre when 180 police officers arrived, led by the Chicago police chief. While he was calling for the meeting to disperse a bomb exploded, killing one policeman. The police retaliated, killing seven of their own in the crossfire, plus four others; almost two hundred were wounded (Whitney, W: 1).
It was uncertain who had exploded the bomb but, after prolonged legal battles, eight leading unionists were charged with the murder of the policeman. Of the eight men charged (including Parsons, Spies and Fielden) seven were to be executed for murder and one was sentenced to fifteen years in gaol (Little 1990: 5-8). Before the executions were carried out, two had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment and one passed away in gaol. Four men were hanged on November 11,1887. Their deaths proved an inspiration to the American labour movement. President of the recently formed American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, reported to the Paris Conference that the Federation had decided to make the 1st May 1890 the date for another round of nationwide strikes and parades to secure the reform of hours.
On hearing of the Chicago deaths, the Paris Conference decided: “There shall be organised a great international demonstration so that on the same agreed day, in every country and every town, the workers shall call upon the State for the legal reduction of the working day to eight hours. In view of the fact that a similar demonstration has been planned by the American Federation of Labor for the first of May, this date is adopted for the International Demonstration.” (Fox 1966:4)
The Second International outlined the intentions for May Day:
1. It was an international show of strength in an emerging class conflict with the aim of recruiting new members;
2. It was to help create the class-consciousness needed for the creation of socialism by promoting a sense of the power of a disciplined organisation; and
3. It was to petition the state for an eight-hour day. (Samuel, R from Filewood & Watt 2001: 205)
Len Fox notes that an important event of Australia’s initial May Day was a meeting held in Melbourne called by the Social Democratic Club, the successor to the Melbourne Anarchist Club, on the 1st May 1890 to advocate for the eight-hour day in sympathy with those struggling in Europe and America (Fox 1966: 5-6). Filewood and Watt argue that it was the involvement of radical groups like the Melbourne Social Democratic Club and the Australian Socialist League (Filewood & Watt 2001: 207), the internationalist associations and the involvement of militant unions that assisted the more overt radical nature of May Day. In the 1920s and 1930s they note that May Day began to challenge the dominance of the reformist strategies of the older craft unions and began to take on more importance as a “declaration of militancy within an increasingly divided labour movement” (Stephen & Reeves 1985: 39). It was the emergent industrial unions and those more militant unions like the coalminers that would assist the rise of May Day in Newcastle and the Hunter Region. It was this radical element that would fuel May Day till the decline of militancy in the 1980s.
Australia’s first May Day demonstration was not in Melbourne or Sydney but at Barcaldine in Queensland in 1891 (Fox 1966: 9). At this time an attempt had been made by the pastoralists and the government to break the Australian Shearers’ Union (ASU) by bringing in non-union labour from the south. The shearers had demanded that all shearing be carried out in accordance with the terms of the contract approved by the union. Pastoralists had signed non-union labour to individual employment contracts for wages that were less than the agreed conditions entered into by the ASU. The Queensland Government sent out police and armed troops; shearers were arrested and gaoled. But, at short notice, the shearers decided that they would celebrate May Day as a rallying point for workers in the area. The “Labour Bulletin”, the shearers’ own paper, records the events of this May Day march at Barcaldine (Fox 1966: 9-10).
In the procession every civilised country was represented doing duty for the Russian, Swede, French, Dane etc, who are germane to him in other climes, showing that Labor’s cause is one the world over, foreshadowing the time when the swords shall be turned into ploughshares and Liberty, Peace and Friendship will knit together the nations of the earth.
A Sydney Morning Herald report of May Day in Barcaldine said that 1340 men took part of whom 618 were mounted on horse. Banners carried included those of the Australian Labor Federation, the Shearers’ and Carriers’ Unions, and one inscribed ‘Young Australia’. The leaders wore blue sashes and the Eureka Flag was carried. The “Labor Bulletin” reported that cheers were given for “the Union”, “the Eight Hour Day”, “the Strike Committee” and “the boys in gaol” (Fox 1966: 9-10).
May Day was first noted as being celebrated in Newcastle was in 1893 – a social evening in Adamstown where a “grand tea” was provided, speeches were made and there was song and dance until well in the evening. The Newcastle Herald (02/05/1893) reported that:-
The Chairman, in opening the proceedings, said he was extremely pleased to see such a large gathering of ladies and gentlemen who had come to celebrate May Day … The gathering was the first of its kind that had been held in the district. He hoped it would not be the last ….
The following year on the 3rd May the Labor Electoral League at Wallsend held a meeting at which Mr LP Vial, President of the Eight-Hour Committee, moved the following resolution:
That in the opinion of this meeting it is desirable that all labor bodies should elect the 1st May as the day on which the cause of labor should be celebrated.
The motion was carried but though other social evenings were held and hosted inconsistently till after World War 1, the demonstration did not take place until the 1920s.
Indeed, in 1920 there was a gathering of members and supporters of the Australian Labor Party at the Railway Institute, Wickham, on the 1st May for the purpose of celebrating Labor Day and the victory of three Labor members elected to parliament for the Newcastle region. The next year a small group of people marched on May Day at Greta. In 1922 celebrations were again held at Greta and also Cessnock, Kurri Kurri and Speers Point. In 1924 West Wallsend held its first May Day march. Following this upsurge it was decided in 1924 to transfer the Eight-Hour Day or Labor Day as it was then known (and that had been celebrated in New South Wales in October) to May but not necessarily the 1st May.
On the 4th May 1925 a sports program was held at the Broadmeadow showground. Processions and sports days were also held at West Wallsend, Speers Point, Greta, Weston / Kurri Kurri (where the marchers would leave from two different locations and meet at a local sports ground) and Cessnock. Maitland held a May Day march in 1927, as did Belmont when the Catherine Hill Bay Band led the march from South Belmont to Belmont. Newcastle held its first May Day March along Hunter St in 1931 when eleven marchers completed the route during heavy rain.
But this important workers’ day was, as a coincidence, associated with the northern hemisphere tradition of May Day – a pre-industrial seasonal ritual full of symbolism and ancient tradition marking the coming of spring – a time of festival and celebration. “Images used in early May Days, on posters, banners, news sheets and souvenirs ranged from those depicting the growing power of the union movement to those associated with fertility or productivity. The sun was a popular image. The spirit of carnival was evident in many May Day celebrations, with children dancing, maypoles, and the crowning of a May Queen – a practice which has been lost in recent times (WCAC 1993: exhibition notes). In his thesis, James notes examples of the traditional May Day celebrations in miners’ festivities since 1856 and in both Eight-Hour Day and May Day marches. In this way, May Day tied working-class political activism to traditional rituals of death and rebirth and festival (Filewood & Watt: 205).
For example, Laurie Jarmson, Secretary of the May Day Committee in Newcastle during the 1930s and 1940s, emphasised that May Day was not just a political affair but a cultural one (Edmonds: 118).
We built up a good procession, we got in the brass bands and the co-operative (store). Workers fought hard to get the co-operative because they thought they’d help themselves with the co-operative stores. The brass bands and the choirs had a workers’ origin, they represent something about the working class … so we thought that all these groups should be represented in May Day.
The Miners’ Federation had won May Day as a paid award holiday for miners in the Southern District in the 1920s. In fact in 1931 the miners in the Northern District had Labour Day gazetted as a holiday for a day in May. James notes that in 1935 the 1st May was gazetted a public holiday ironically as a holiday to celebrate the Jubilee of George V (James 1993i: 373). The following year the Cessnock May Day Committee decided to observe the day itself, the 1st May, as May Day following the policy laid down by the Miners’ Federation. This in turn and with the great efforts of the local union movement led to May Day in the Hunter Region being promulgated as a public holiday.
Jim Comerford notes that one important influence on the Miners Federation and its members embracing May Day as against Labor Day was the Socialist Labor Party (Comerford 2002). Both Northern District President and Secretary were SLP men. So too were several members of the Miners Federation Central Council and Northern Board of Management. The co-operative movement also gave strong support to May Day as did the Christian Socialist Movement that developed on the South Maitland coalfield. During the Depression the Unemployed Workers Movement and pro-Lang ALP branches entered into May Day.
The 1940 May Day (Newcastle) ‘Celebration and Sports Programme’ for the ‘Mighty May Day Muster’ proclaimed ‘Workers! Take Your Place in the May Day Procession. Make May Day a Huge Success’. Unions such as the Australian Railways Union, the Shop Assistants Union, Seaman’s Union, Carpenters and Joiners, Butchers, Electrical Trades, Water Board Employees, Moulders, Trolley, Draymen and Carters’ Union, the Boilermakers’ Society and the Federated Ironworkers Association were noted in the program and called on their members to march.
Fox notes that following the end of the Second World War May Day celebrations raised the demand of the unity of all people to establish a lasting peace and the need to tread the path to “a world free from exploitation and oppression” (Fox 1966: 13). He argues that this was even more important with the development of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation and it reiterated a theme present from the Barcaldine May Day march in 1891.
A program from Cessnock May Day celebrations in 1952 carried this resolution – “To all working people we issue our May Day call for unity – unity for peace – unity to win the demands of the mineworkers and other sections of the working class – united the working class stands invincible”. And in 1954 local coal miner/poet Jock Graham (Fox 1966: 13) wrote:
This day we’ll demonstrate our cause from Sydney to Hong Kong;
In every city round the world, a hundred million strong.
A hundred million messages this day we will release –
With one united, mighty voice, we’ll call the world to peace.
May Day in Newcastle during the 1950s was a grand affair as this description shows from the Newcastle and Coalfields Workers Club Journal (May, 1959).
In bright sunshine, more than 1,000 members of 35 unions marched the length of Hunter Street, with more than 40,000 people watching the mile and a half long procession that took about half an hour to pass a given point. The twenty-five floats included eight carrying May Queens. The parade also included twenty teams of marching girls, a bus load of pensioners, the Labor Party, the Communist Party and the Hunter Valley Jazz Band. While a wreath to honour all who had died for freedom and peace was being laid on the Cenotaph by the President of May Day (Mr A Parrey), three Royal Aero Club planes flew in formation over the marchers (Phillips 1998: 26).
An advertisement for May Day in 1954 carried in The Newcastle Morning Herald (Phillips 1998: 26) listed the following events to occur from May 1st to May 10th:
• A procession from Pacific Park to the No. 1 Sportsground where a program of events such as children’s races, national and folk dances, Scottish Pipe Band contest, relay races, men’s hockey match, a tug-o-war contest and the crowning of the May Queen was to take place. There were amusements for children and prizes in categories such as the “best decorated billy-cart or pram”.
• An Annual Art Exhibition
• Grand Film Festival
• Celebrity Concert
• A production of “Reedy River” at the Newcastle Stadium
• And, later on 6th June the Annual Ball at City Hall.
The Ball was held a number of weeks after May Day at City Hall where the Lord Mayor was invited to crown the winner of the May Queen contest. As Bob Phillips notes, “to achieve this honour the May Queen and her supporters had to raise the largest amount of money. Female beauty was not formally required, but there are many photographs which demonstrate that it certainly was not a hindrance for aspiring May Queens” (Phillips 1998: 26).
In 1957 the Mary Gilmore National Literary Competition and the Newcastle Suburban Co-operative Society Shield for the best trade union float were introduced.
n 1962 the local newspaper reported on May Day marches held in Cessnock, Kurri Kurri and Newcastle. In Newcastle 3000 people participated in a procession of some forty floats and several hundred banners with over 20,000 people watching (Newcastle Morning Herald 08/05/1962).
Yet May Day in Newcastle was not free of controversy. In the 1950s May Day was caught up in the anti-communist campaign of these Cold War years as first the TWU and then FIA delegates to Newcastle Trades Hall Council sought unsuccessfully to have the Communist Party removed from the march. Also, in 1954, “the ALP state executive, overriding objections from its Newcastle electorate council, forbade ALP members to march in the procession as an ALP group. It was powerless, however, to prevent them from marching with their unions”(Phillips 1998: 29). This had not been the first decree by the ALP state executive against the Newcastle May Day celebrations. In 1936 the ALP Islington Branch had moved for Labour Day to be returned to October to prevent its communist association (James 1993i: 387). Later, in 1963, the march was ‘gate-crashed’ by a float bearing slogans calling for the abolition of May Day and the reinstatement of the Labour Day holiday in October (The Newcastle Sun 06/05/1963). This protest was organised and funded by a small group of young Newcastle businessmen.
The year, 1963, became the last May Day as a public holiday in Newcastle. The State Labor government refused to gazette the annual May Day holiday in Newcastle and surrounding districts for 1964 and decreed that Labor Day in October would be the only gazetted Labor Day holiday in NSW.
In response the Newcastle Trades Hall Council carried the following resolution:
The decision of the State Labor Government not to grant the traditional May Day holiday means that they have in the main capitulated to demands from anti-labour sources. They have also trampled on the traditions associated with the May Day holiday. The actions of the Government, besides cutting across the wishes of a very large section of the trade union movement is also an affront to the pioneers of May Day who worked over so many years to make the gazetted day a success in this district.
Council records its appreciation to the pioneers and the trade unionists who so solidly campaigned for the retention of our traditional day. We confidently appeal to all to rally as never before on May 3rd and make this May Day one of the most colourful and widely represented. This should be the answer of the trade union movement to those who have used their authority to abolish our recognition of this traditional workers’ day.
Bob Phillips in his history of the Newcastle Workers Club (Phillips 1998: 99ff) notes that the ALP state executive had been agitating for some time for the removal of May Day as a public holiday. The executive was positioning the ALP as a moderate party. As such, it did not want ALP members and parliamentarians participating in an event that they and the media viewed as having radical, socialist or communist connotations. In 1963 the NSW Cabinet decided that the first Monday in October would be the Labour Day holiday for the whole state. As such, Newcastle enjoyed two public holidays that year.
As Phillips notes, one point of concern to unions during the loss of May Day as a public holiday had been the campaign of The Newcastle Herald (then The Newcastle Morning Herald) against May Day. In 1962 and 1963 it devoted six leaders to this purpose as well as several articles attacking the Newcastle Workers Club and Newcastle Trades Hall Council (Phillips 1998: 101). Not only had the local press worked against May Day but also the local council. The Lord Mayor of Newcastle, Alderman Frank Purdue, had criticised the granting of a public holiday and even called for a public referendum on the issue. It was gratifying then that when local alderman and later State Member for Newcastle, Arthur Wade, was called upon to propose the toast to May Day at the May Day Dinner of 1963 he was reported to have said,
“Our right to determine when we shall hold May Day should not be taken away from us … the Red Flag should lead the May Day march because it symbolised (sic) the blood shed by countless workers in their struggles (and) the truth is that May Day celebrations in Newcastle were started by the early political Labor leagues and supported by staunch members of the ALP in later years” (Phillips 1998: 100).
One source of enduring support for May Day in Newcastle has been the Newcastle Workers Club. Since its inception in 1948 the Club has been a fervent supporter of May Day. For example, the annual dinner and other after-march functions have been hosted at the Club; staff have provided invaluable assistance to May Day organisers; and the Workers Club has sponsored May Day art, literary and folk-song competitions, a May Day Ball, tennis tournaments and a cycling race. In 1962 and again in 1969, the Club provided funds for Newcastle Surf Club to purchase a new surf boat. The boats were named May Day I and May Day II respectively. The Club also gave permission to the May Day Committee to run guessing competitions or raffles at the Club on busy nights to assist them in raising funds for May Day (Phillips 1998: 103). This was very important in the 1970s as the practice of crowning a May Queen was discontinued following representations from female trade unionists. The May Queen competition had previously raised a great amount of funds for May Day.
In the early 1970s the war in Vietnam dominated the themes for May Day. Other relevant themes throughout the 1970s and into 1980s included support for the indigenous, women’s liberation, peace and nuclear disarmament, protecting the environment, supporting public transport and public education, East Timor and the growing movement to see Australia as a republic. But the radical and participatory nature of May Day began to dissipate in the 1980s with the rise of the Accord.
Under the Hawke Labor government, the first of a series of Prices and Incomes Accords were introduced as formulas for wage determination in 1983. Negotiated by the Federal Government and the ACTU as National Wage Case decisions, the first Accord provided for centralised wage fixing and full indexation of wages. The series of Accords lasted until the mid-1990s during which time decentralised wage fixing and enterprise bargaining was also introduced. After a decade or more of wage fixing with little or no collective action to attain wage rises, unions were thrown into action with the election of a Coalition Federal government in 1996. The Workplace Relations and other Legislation Amendments Act was passed which enforced voluntary unionism and provided for non-union individual contracts between employers and workers. This reduced the power of the Federal Industrial Relations Commission by replacing award rates with individual contracts called Australia Workplace Agreements that also restricted the access of unions to the workplace and placed greater emphasis on workplace negotiations between the employer and individual employees. In general, it has taken unions some time to re-organise and invigorate its membership following the changeover from the centralised wage fixing of the Accord to the workplace and individual negotiations of the new Workplace Relations Act.
In parallel, during the 1980s and 90s, May Day has steadily declined in participation rates with some noted exceptions – in 1985 when Newcastle Trades Hall Council celebrated its centenary, in 1993 when May Day celebrated its centenary in this region, and during the 1998 waterfront lockout.
In 1985, The Newcastle Herald (06/05/85) reported the secretary of Newcastle Trades Hall Council, Peter Barrack as saying …
More than 1000 people enjoyed on Saturday the best May Day celebrations in Newcastle for many years … A diversity of unions, women, peace and ethnic groups were among the marchers who paraded from Pacific Park
The reporter went on to note “Mr Barrack said a highlight of the march was a horse-drawn replica of an early 1900s float that celebrated Newcastle’s early mining history”. Also of great significance that year was the centenary banner painted by Brigitte Hansen to commemorate 100 years of Newcastle Trades Hall Council.
Organised jointly by the NTHC May Day Committee and the Workers Cultural Action Committee, unionists and community groups assembled at Civic Park in 1993 for a march along Hunter St. and Scott St. to the Foreshore Park adjacent to Newcastle Harbour to celebrate the centenary of May Day in Newcastle. Lead by the City of Newcastle RSL Pipe Band, the procession recalled the grandeur of the May Day marches of the 1950s with floats, parade art and marching bands. Arriving at the Foreshore, marchers were entertained by a number of bands and performers. The Toast to May Day Dinner that year featured former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
In 1994 the Workers Cultural Action Committee embarked on an ambitious artistic program called “Mayfest”. In the week following May Day, the Committee presented an exhibition of work by local photographer, Allan Chawner, about working at the Newcastle Steelworks’ Bloomcaster. The Committee also conducted a short story competition, a performance night, an eclectic community cabaret and a conference regarding union arts activities.
The 1998 May Day celebrations coincided with not only the national waterfront dispute of that year when Patricks Stevedores illegally sacked its workforce but also the fiftieth anniversary of the Newcastle Workers Club. Activism among union members that year was very high. Members of many unions and non-members, old and young, were at the picket lines and assembly points across Australia. Participants at the Newcastle May Day Dinner, Picnic and March swelled above the usual numbers.
May Day has grown from its precursor and, at one time, its adversary, the Eight-Hour Day march and its demonstration about shorter working hours, to a more radical protest march, and to be a public holiday parade displaying all the trappings of a public celebratory event. But, it has since subsided in the latter part of the last century in parallel with the fall in union activism. The large number of participants and the many crowds that once lined Hunter Street are gone. Gone too are the May Day marches in different areas of the Hunter Region.
May Day has been both protest and celebration but its greatest value lies in its role in re-building the union community. It is a mechanism. It can be part of a strategy to create opportunities for people to be actively engaged rather than passively involved. It is a community-building project and it is as much about assisting a change in mindset – to help people shift by seeing themselves not as objects of change but as agents of change. To paraphase Gay Hawkins (Hawkins 1993: 131), May Day has become central to the political survival of the union community because it is in the capacity to produce and practise culture that union identity and organisation are both celebrated and maintained. And increasingly it is these public displays of union identity and culture that reinforces the union community. When its members are not active, unions and May Day itself have lost their way.
So from its themes of unity, of internationalism, of world peace, out of oppression, police violence and bloodshed around the struggles for the reduction of working hours, May Day has arisen to be the day for the union community. It is our day, it is something to be proud of and it is something to participate in by all union members.
Comerford, Jim (2001) Letter to S Wilson
Copley, MP (1963) “History of May Day in Newcastle” Authorised by the NTHC May Day Committee
Dawson, Darrell (1977) “International May Day 1890-1977” The Communist Party of Australia (Newcastle)
Edmonds, R. (1991) “In Storm and Struggle: a history of the Communist Party in Newcastle 1920 – 1940” Ross Edmonds
Filewood, Alan & Watt, David (2001) “Workers Playtime: theatre and the labour movement since 1970” Currency Press
Fox, Len (1966) “May Day in Australia” Sydney May Day Committee
Hawkins, Gay (1993) “From Nimbin to Mardi Gras” Allen & Unwin
James, Robert (1993i) “Carnival, Discipline and Labour History: An Historiographic Study of the Meaning of Eight Hour Day, May Day and other Labour Demonstrations in the Hunter River District, 1860-1940” unpublished PhD, University of Newcastle
James, Robert (1993ii) “Eight Hour Day and May Day in the Hunter River District” Paper prepared for Labour History Conference
Little, Vida (1990) “A Short History of 100 Years of May Day 1890-1990” Melbourne May Day Committee
“May Day – one hundred years of Struggle” Sydney May Day Committee (1986)
“Newcastle May Day Celebrations 1964” Official Programme Newcastle Trades Hall Council May Day Committee (1964)
Phillips, Bob (1998) “The Red Inn: the first 50 years of the Newcastle Workers Club” Newcastle Workers Co-op Club
Stephen, Ann & Reeves, Andrew (1985) “Badges of Labour, Banners of Pride: Aspects of Working Class Celebration” Trustees of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences
Whitney, WT Jr “May Day and the Haymarket Matyrs” www.igc.org/laborstandard/Vol1No3/
Workers Cultural Action Committee (1985) “… and 8 bob a day: a photographic history of the labour movement in the Hunter Valley to celebrate the Centenary of Newcastle Trades Hall Council 1885 – 1985” Exhibition compiled by Rod Noble
Workers Cultural Action Committee (1993) “100 Years of Working Together, 100 Years of Marching Together: May Day 1993 The Centenary of May Day in Newcastle” Exhibition compiled by Bob Phillips with the assistance of Rod Noble
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