© Meg Dillon 2008
Australian Colonial History
Moments in Australian History
The Growth of the Labour Movement in 1890s
The Shearers Strikes in Western Queensland in 1891, 1894; the Sunshine Harvester Strike of 1911 in Victoria; and The
Great Strike of 1917 that started at the Randwick Tram Sheds marked a resumption by a new generation of workers of
demands for a “fair go”. Did this all start with the Eureka Stockade in the 1850s? Or were these the first great battles
between capital and labour that would come to define Australian politics in the twentieth century? And how do these
actions fit with the Fabian Socialism of Sidney and Beatrice Webb who visited Australia in 1898?