We Built This Country – Builders’ Labourers and their Unions, by Humphrey McQueen, Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide, 2011, 364pp, $30.00 Review by Howard Guille This is the second book of Humphrey McQueen’s research into builders’ labourers and their unions. Read it, as the author says, with the earlier volume ‘Framework of Flesh: Builders’ labourers battle [...]
Archive | Book Review RSS feed for this section
To strike or not to…
My book review of ‘Reviving the Strike’ now also posted at Left Focus here http://leftfocus.blogspot.com/2011/12/important-book-review-reviving-strike.html Also posted on the new Evatt website http://evatt.org.au/news/reviving-strike.html
Australian Poem
Now for a bit of “Australian culture” by the working persons poet Jim Sharp This has something for everyone – if you know the bush, it will appeal to you, if you work in the oil industry, there is something in it for you too, if you have a sense of humour – well, it [...]
On strikes and their revival
Book Review by Chris White of Joe Burns ‘Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America’ (2011 IG Publishing). I urge debate on reviving the strike. Joe Burns has a stimulating analysis and conclusion in his book ‘Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America.’ Australia’s labour [...]
More on ‘Reviving the strike’
Joe Burns blog argues that the labor movement must revive an effective strike based on the traditional tactics of labor–stopping production and workplace-based solidarity. The blog also promotes Joe Burns book, published by IG Publishing in May 2011, Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America. See my earlier post recommending [...]
Hobsbawm – how to change the world
Eric Hobsbawm ‘How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism’ (Published by Little, Brown, 2011). Review by Chris White (appears in Options 66) In this era of the new world capitalist system crisis, Hobsbawm’s sparkling style and incisive analysis in ‘How to Change the World’ shows that Marx is still a thinker for [...]
‘Red Silk’
This earlier post was erased by a spam attack. Elliott Johnston has passed away. He is a working class hero.I was not able to attend the public celebration of his life in Elder Hall, Adelaide. You can get some idea of Elliott Johnston for those who did not know him in this book just published, [...]
Options 66
The magazine Australian Options no 66 Spring 2011 has good articles on: why we have to get out of Afghanistan and the costs of war; critiques of Gillard’s Clean Energy policies – a capital agenda, ecological modernisation, and limits and alternatives on climate change; unions greens and markets;education in the aboriginal world;national competition policy; the [...]
We Built This Country
‘We Built This Country – Builders’ Labourers and their Unions’ by Humphrey McQueen Order copies from bookshops or Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide, 2011. The following are the timelines. 1780s to 1850 Unions 1788 The first BLs are convicts. Some run away from floggings to range the bush. 1829 ‘Free’ workers are controlled by Masters and [...]
News from LabourStart
- Syria: Assad Refusal of Peace Plan Will Deepen Conflict
- Kazakhstan: Member Of Public Commission Probing Kazakh Oil Town Clash Charged With Crime
- USA: The Privatization of Public Services, State by State
- Cambodia: Workers hold 'people's tribunal' to look at factory conditions
- Netherlands: Dutch cleaners on strike
- Tunisia: National strike over media freedoms
- Philippines: “More Unionists were Killed”: Alliance of Progressive Labor testifies
- Europe: Trade Union Industrial Federation Takes Shape for Europe
- Brazil: Vale elected as the most evil company 2012
- Kazakhstan: State of emergency lifted by regime in Kazakh strike town
Recent Comments