NAOMISEGAL∗
In their paper ‘The origins of compulsory arbitration in Western Australia’, Plowman and Calkin (2004) bring comparison to bear on the introduction in 1900 of compulsory arbitration in Western Australia, the first Australian colony/state to have such legislation. Dismissing employers, liberal reformers, political labour and trade unions as being the architects of the legislation (e.g. they claim that the Labor Party, as currently understood, ‘did not exist when the Bill was debated’ and that trade unions had shown no capacity to ‘affect legislative or industrial outcomes’ (Plowman & Calkin 2004: 80)), Plowman and Calkin ultimately rely on Western Australian exceptionalism to explain the phenomenon. ‘[P]olitical opportunism, the need to take account of collective employment relations, and the capacity of employers to shape the Act in a way that constrained unions but also maximised the reach of arbitration’ (Plowman & Calkin 2004) play a role in this explanation.
In reaching their conclusions, Plowman and Calkin take issue with aspects of my 2002 article ‘Compulsory arbitration and the Western Australian gold-mining industry: A re-examination of the inception of compulsory arbitration in Western Australia’ (Segal 2002), which focuses on both the context within which and the process by which the legislation arose. One of my conclusions was that the legislation in Western Australia was passed as a consequence of deliberate pre-emptive action by a state/capital alliance, although capital was reactive at the beginning of the process. In this alliance, the Chamber of Mines, the most dominant of Western Australian employer groups at that time, was ‘mindful of the utility, and alert to the opportunity of passing weak arbitration legislation under [the experienced and wily] Forrest’ (Segal 2002: 64) and wished to do so before the Parliament’s composition changed under the influence of an expanded franchise.
Although I would question some of Plowman and Calkin’s propositions and conclusions (e.g. that labour did not exist in a party-political sense in West-ern Australia pre-arbitration), my aim here is to further the debate by address-ing some of their criticism of my 2002 work. Specifically, Plowman and Calkin challenged my suggestions that the industrial peace the Arbitration Bill was to guarantee was intended to ‘safeguard W.A.’s credit rating for the gold indus-try’ (Plowman & Calkin 2004: 72, 73) and that Forrest’s preparations to intro-duce an Arbitration Bill were genuine. According to Plowman and Calkin, to argue for the protective intentions of the state is inconsistent with the resistance of ‘investors’ to the arbitration legislation, as well as with my claim that ‘min-ing employers had much to lose by submitt‘min-ing to the legislation’ (Plowman &
∗Organisational and Labour Studies, School of Economics and Commerce, UWA Business School, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia. Email: naomiseg@iinet.net.au
Calkin: 73). And, as ‘investors’ perceived the Arbitration Bill to be a big disadvan-tage, how could the Act protect the creditworthiness of the industry? Furthermore, as the 1900 compulsory arbitration legislation was ineffectual, they argue that it was not ‘a deterrent to industrial action’ (Plowman & Calkin 2004) and, therefore, could not guarantee industrial peace, except in the case of ‘weak unions prepared to accept the constraints and costs associated with registration’.
Most importantly, Plowman and Calkin seek to restore the orthodoxy relating to aquid pro quoaccording to which trade union representatives allegedly ensured the failure of a censure motion against Forrest in return for Forrest introducing and passing the Arbitration Bill. The alleged deal was supposed to have been struck on 16 August 1900, at an afternoon meeting between Forrest and delegates from a Trades Union and Labour Congress (TULC) which was then sitting.
In response, I would suggest that there is considerable evidence for Govern-ment concern about the impact on the already tarnished reputation of the mines of gargantuan industrial struggles, which were brewing in the mines in 1900 (see footnote 151 in Segal (2002)). There is also ample evidence for concern over the impact on Government borrowing of changes in the value of the mines (see, for example, WAPD, New series, XVII: 161–162). As to perceptions by ‘investors’ that the legislation was to their disadvantage, it is important to appreciate that what I was describing was the complex process in which the protagonists’ posi-tions changed in response to events, engagements and arguments. Thus, there was no single or static ‘investor’ position. The local Chamber of Mines, initially implacably opposed to the Bill and concerned not to lose its bargaining power, gradually reconciled itself to the Bill’s inevitability and convinced the overseas company boards that its actions in allowing the Bill, shaped to its purpose, to pro-ceed were in the mining companies’ interest: ‘when London knew exactly what we had done, they would agree that the wisest policy had been adopted at this end’ (Segal 2002: 97). It is also essential to avoid thinking of mining capital in 1900 as homogeneous and organised, of ‘investors’ complaining about compulsory arbi-tration legislation as its single voice, or of the threat of a capital strike, of which companies made frequent use, as necessarily genuine. Rather, mining capital in 1900 was fractured, both within London and the periphery, a situation which I argued compelled Forrest, in the face of an imminent industrial catastrophe on the Goldfields and the approaching elections, to intervene in the matter of arbitra-tion on behalf of ‘as yet incompletely organised mining capital’ (Segal 2002: 64). This intervention included the intention to manage the Bill’s passage through the House in employers’ interests: ‘[The government] have watered [the Bill] down as much as possible’, the Western Australian Agent General reassured a delega-tion of London representatives of mining companies with interests in Western Australia in October 1900, ‘but more would be done in the Upper House’ (Segal 2002: 95).
weathered the bitter and expensive dispute at the Paddington Consols Mine, and its leaders, who were all too conscious of the outcome of the Eastern Australian strikes in the 1890s, desperately wished for industrial peace (Segal 2002: 77; also
KM 29 March, 2 June 1900), especially on the eve of a major political effort by labour at the imminent State and Federal elections. Evidence of this is that the mining unions,1 concerned at the brewing Goldfields industrial trouble,
regis-tered almost immediately once the Act was passed, flawed and ineffectual though it was (WABoCA, 1, 1901–1903: 199–205), and thereby voluntarily relinquished their ability to engage in direct industrial action. But even before the legislation was passed, leaders of the Amalgamated Workers’ Association used the Bill’s im-minence to return striking workers on the Ivanhoe Mine to work, promising to submit their grievance to arbitration once the Court was established (Segal 2002: 76). (The problem festered until 1902, when the union finally took action under the 1902 Act.) In short, ineffectual though the 1900 legislation was, its function as a barrier to open industrial warfare must not be underestimated.
The main challenge to Segal (2002) in Plowman and Calkin’s article, however, is the resuscitation of the argument that Forrest did not have the numbers to survive a censure motion in late 1900 without the support from labour, which he obtained in what labour politician G. F. Pearce and others later claimed was aquid pro quo: Forrest would ensure the introduction and passage of the Arbitration Bill in return for labour representatives inducing labour-friendly Parliamentarians not to submit or support the censure motion. (Accounts differ somewhat as to who the Parliamentarians to be influenced by labour were, what Forrest asked labour to do etc.) It was the prospect of a combination against Forrest of the Opposition proper with the ‘third party’ (also called ‘the corner’), a group of disillusioned Forrest supporters, that was assumed to constitute the threat to Forrest’s government. Disillusion of Forrest supporters was due either to concern at further state debt, which Forrest proposed to incur or to Forrest’s about-turn on the Federation issue (Crowley 2000: 292), or both. According to the orthodoxy, the defeat of the Forrest Government was supposedly averted when, at the instigation of the union delegation, the TULC threatened politicians who acted to have Parliament prematurely prorogued or to defeat the Arbitration Bill with the ‘enmity of labour’, meaning either failure to support them or competition from labour at the next election. Several politicians were assumed to have changed sides in the censure vote because of this threat, thereby delivering to Forrest stability of government and, to labour, compulsory arbitration.
A succession of Western Australian historians, including Gibbney, Merritt, L. B. McIntyre and Dufty, has accepted the version of events that Plowman and Calkin once again put forward and which is essential to the triumphalist labour version of the inception of compulsory arbitration in Western Australia. Before being overwhelmed by the weight of this orthodoxy, however, one should consider that these historians mostly either quote each other or faithfully tread in each others’ evidentiary footprints,2as, sadly, is so often the case in Western Australian
historiography.
accounts by J. Croft, H. de Largie and G. F. Pearce, who were among the delegates seeing Forrest. Plowman and Calkin (2004: 71) referred to only one of these. Second, it is difficult to accept the orthodoxy’s claim that labour was responsible not only for the passing of the legislation but also for its introduction (see, for example, Dufty 1990: 7). If Forrest had no intention of introducing the legislation to the Parliamentary session of late 1900, he was being exceedingly disingenuous in the many steps he took to reassure various interests that he intended doing so, including delegations from the Goldfields Trades and Labor Council (TLC) and the Kalgoorlie Municipal Council (KM27 June, 3 August 1900;WA12 July 1900). He also distributed the draft Bill (WAr 2 August;KM27 June 1900) and included promise of the legislation in the Governor’s speech at the beginning of the Parliamentary session, all this before meeting the unionists on 16 August. After creating so many expectations that the Bill, intensely popular, especially on the Goldfields, would be introduced, Forrest or his party, ‘face to face...with
a general election’ (WAr6 September 1900) would have paid a severe electoral penalty for not bringing it forward. The same penalty would have attached to allowing it to lapse or be defeated once it was introduced.
Plowman and Calkin argue, however, that even under these circumstances, consistent with ‘the normal dealings of politics’ (p. 72), a trade-off was not out of the question. I would counter, first, that a trade-off in which Forrest granted that which he was intending to deliver anyhow leaves thequid pro quoorthodoxy much diminished and, second, that the evidence suggests that no matter what Forrest implied, even as he met with unionists, his difficulties with the censure motion, such as they were, had been resolved independently of labour. It was clear on the afternoon of 16 August (while Forrest was meeting TULC delegates) that the prospects of success of the censure motion were dismal. According to ‘an authoritative’ statement from ‘two of the most prominent members’ of the ‘third party’ (WA18 August 1900), after a meeting of that ‘party’ on the afternoon of 16 August (the same time as the union delegation supposedly clinched thequid pro quo), the ‘third party’ made an overture to Forrest to explain its opposition to additional public expenditure and to the passing of any new legislation. It is unclear whether the ‘corner’ or ‘third party’ understood, as others did, that even if they were successful in the censure motion (a doubtful proposition), their majority would be insufficient to form a new Ministry (KM18, 21 August 1900) and that forming government with the Opposition would not be viable (WAr 6 September 1900). The alternative of the dissolution of Parliament and an early election on incomplete rolls, for which they would be blamed if successful in a no-confidence motion, was too odious for them to contemplate. It is significant, however, that the ‘third party’ did not contact the Opposition on 16 August, as the Opposition had been expecting (WAr23 August 1900),5to work out a common
bluster, a compromise to the rebels in his ranks. The compromise involved a conscience vote on all the items in his Parliamentary program, including money bills. On 18 August, the papers pronounced the breach in the Forrest Party’s ranks healed (WA18 August 1900). In this context, the Opposition’s tabling of a censure motion, which everyone knew was doomed to fail,6on 21 August was tactical: to
provide a pre-election platform from which to attack the Forrest Government.7
The minority who finally voted for the censure motion, including a remnant of the third party, could do so safe in the knowledge that they would not oust or change the Forrest Government.
And what about the strong evidence that labour, well in advance of any meeting with Forrest, threatened Parliamentarians with labour enmity if they destabilised the Government, thereby showing that, quite independent of any trade-offs, labour had an interest in the stability of the Forrest Government and believed in the genuineness of Forrest’s intentions to pass compulsory arbitration legislation? There were at least two such labour threats well before 16 August. On 5 August 1900, speaking at Kanowna, Hugh de Largie, then President of the Amalgamated Workers’ Association, addressed the possibility that the present Parliament could dissolve without passing the Compulsory Arbitration Bill. de Largie hoped that in that eventuality, ‘every democrat would swear undying hos-tility to every member that [sic] did not endeavour to have [the Arbitration Bill] placed upon the statute book’ (KM9 August 1900). On 14 August, F. C. Gilbert, representing the mining unions at the 1900 TULC, proposed to the Congress that
Parliament be requested to immediately pass into law the Compulsory Conciliation and Arbitration Bill...Further that we shall regard any MP retarding the passage of the Bill, by attempting to call amendments or otherwise, as hostile to the principle of compulsory Conciliation and Arbitration.(author’s emphasis)
These and other primary sources raise more questions about the received wis-dom in relation to thequid pro quo. Did the support for the censure motion and the threat to the Arbitration Bill emanate largely from labour’s own ranks? The opposition of the Railway Employees’ Union to the motion threatening Par-liamentarians suggests it did. de Largie certainly perceived this to be the case. Although his own statement to this effect is not, apparently, preserved, the re-sponse to it is: ‘Mr De Largie was mistaken in supposing that the present crisis [in the Forrest Party’s ranks] was caused by the non-recognition of the railway associations’, Oppositionist F. C. B. Vosper argued in front of TULC delegates the morning after the unionists’ meeting with Forrest (MH18 August 1900).
The railway unions, at that time still fighting for Government recognition, had considerable influence8 over a group of Fremantle Parliamentarians (Members
of the Legislative Assembly J. J. Holmes, E. Solomon, D. J. Doherty and J. J. Higham). At the instigation of the railway unions, Higham had, in May 1900, moved a censure motion against Forrest over the recognition issue. Contrary to arrangements between the unions and the politicians, Solomon had failed to sec-ond it. Again on the ‘instructions’ of the railway unions (REUMinute Books, 1, Joint Conference 30 May 1900), Higham subsequently withdrew it, doing so ap-parently before the Opposition had an opportunity to respond (WA1 June 1900).9
The discussion of these developments by Fremantle Parliamentarians at a confer-ence with the joint Executives of the two railway unions in May 1900 shows, on the one hand, how deeply reluctant to defeat Forrest these Parliamentarians were and how fearful of an early general election10, and, on the other, the extent of the
movement and their dissent contained (if only temporarily), has, with the help of unsuspecting historians, been dressed up for several generations as a moment of labour triumph over a political adversary.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to B. Altena, A. Weston, I vanden Driesen and K. Vincent for commenting on an earlier version of this paper.
ABBREVIATIONS
CPD Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates KM Kalgoorlie Miner
WA West Australian
WABoCA West Australia. Boards of Conciliation and Court of Arbitration. Reports of Proceedings
WAPD Western Australian Parliamentary Debates WAr Western Argus
ENDNOTES
1. By January 1901, the Amalgamated Miners Association (AMA) had split from the Amalgamated Workers’ Association (AWA). Both AWA and AMA had many branches.
2. Compare, for example, Dufty’s account (Dufty 1979: 181, 1990: 6–7) with Merritt’s (1965: 65–67).
3. Segal (2002) provided the sources for the alternative explanation (see footnote 19, p. 63), but could not render the story in its entirety due to lack of space.
4. For example, the three labour leaders’ accounts differ in their claims as to what Forrest asked them to do. They also vary in their claims as to what eventually transpired (see Pearce 1951: 39, 40 and CPD XXII: 5157. Contrary to their claims, the censure motion was neither withheld nor abandoned). The disagreements over Forrest’s alleged appeal are not surprising, because according to some of the accounts, Forrest only ‘hinted’ at a deal (Merritt 1965). Pearce’s account is also internally contradictory; although insisting on the importance of thequid pro quo
to the fate of the censure motion, he also claimed that Forrest’s own powers of persuasion lost Forrest’s opponents their majority (Pearce 1951: 39). Forrest himself repeatedly maintained that the censure motion was never a threat to him.
5. A report in theWA17 August 1900 that the Opposition and the ‘third party’ had met is incorrect.
6. Four parliamentarians (George, Moran, Illingworth and Wallace) pronounced the censure motion dead, well in advance of the division on it (see WAPD, New Series, XVII: 79, 130, 136, 160).
7. See also the Opposition’s F. C. B. Vosper assuring the Parliament in the debate on the censure motion that ‘The Opposition have not brought this forward with a desire to hinder the progress of the colony or unnecessarily postpone public works; but in bringing forward this amendment their desire is to voice the feeling of the country in regard to the present Government, and also in regard to the unrepresentative character of the present Parliament in view of the coming election’ (WAPD, New Series, XVII: 79).
8. Moran, of the ‘third party’, identified the influence of the railway unions over some Parlia-mentarians: ‘Why, Mr Cartwright owned the political soul of several members of Parliament; those members dared not move without his permission’ (WAPD, XVII: 555, also 627). 9. The initiative of a censure motion was abandoned after Forrest promised to recognise the
unions within a month (REUMinute Books, 1, Joint Meeting REU and LEDFA 30 May 1900). However, F. H. Piesse, then Minister for Railways, protested at being sidelined by Forrest and succeeded in delaying the recognition until after his resignation.
10. The discussion proceeded as follows:
were riding for a fall and desired to be defeated so that they might have a general election on the old rolls and as he was not prepared to assist them in this he would vote against the motion. Holmes said that no matter what the consequences, he would not give a vote that would send the present Government to power for another three years and he contended that it was better that the Associations should wait for recognition than that the general election should be fought on the old rolls. Mr. Doherty endorsed what Mr. Higham had said. (REU Minute Books, 1, Joint Meeting REU and LEDFA 30 May 1900)
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A History of Commerce and Industry in Western Australia, pp. 174–208. Nedlands, WA: UWA Pr. Gibbney HJ (1949)Working Class Organisation in Western Australia from 1880–1902. BA Hons.
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