The Industrial Workers of the World and Conscription in Australia

indonesia / philippines / australia | history of anarchism | news report Monday April 25, 2005 16:13 by ? - IWW

Text of IWW leaflet produced for Anzac day

In October 1916 and again in December 1917 the Australian people voted against conscription. In Australia, unlike every other belligerent, there was no conscription to the First World War. The credit for this result goes in large part to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) founded in the USA in 1905. The IWW or "wobblies" were militant socialists and Anarchists numbering perhaps 500 in Australia at their peak. They were famous for their songs, their humour and their revolutionary flair.

The IWW founded the united-front Anti-Conscription League which carried the anti-conscription campaign until it gained mainstream support. In addition the IWW played a crucial spearhead role. It was they who took the knocks, and the jail terms, as any activity likely to "prejudice recruitment" was a criminal offence and this legislation was freely used against anti-war and anti-conscription activists. And it was the IWW that kept opposition to the war alive in the early days when the war was widely popular. As the militant end of the labour movement the IWW played a big part in mobilizing anti-war and anti-conscription sentiment in the broader labour and union movement The ALP had been the war government but it split over the issue of conscription and it was a coalition government including ex-ALP renegades which took conscription to the people.

The anti-war movement was of course wider than the IWW and the anti-conscription movement wider again. There were pacifists, and there were opponents of the war in the womens' movement. There were other left groups opposed to the war. The first conscription referendum closely followed brutal suppression by British troops of the Easter Rising in Dublin, this influenced some Irish Catholics and the Catholic Archbishop Mannix was a vocal opponent of conscription. Votes against conscription also came from farmers (because they didn't want to lose their labour supply) and from Australian soldiers who had seen combat...the hostility of fighting soldiers to conscription apart from perhaps tipping the balance in a very close vote was also important in that it denied the pro-conscription crowd what would have been a potent propaganda weapon. Soldiers who had not yet shipped overseas were generally in favour of conscription and were mobilized to attack anti-conscription meetings. Later they changed their minds. When all allowance is made for these special cases the IWW has to be recognized as the glue which held the anti-conscription movement together, tirelessly relating the world war to the everyday class struggle at home. The connection was indeed not hard to make when the government encouraged employers to enforce an "economic draft"; sacking or refusing to hire men eligible for enlistment. There was no social security.

The capitalist press went all out to demonize the IWW to an extent comparable to the present demonization of radical Islam. The "terrorist" tag was also used against the IWW because of their advocacy of sabotage, and they were accused of being agents of the Germans. As well as overtly political charges the criminal courts were more generally used against the IWW at any opportunity. In 1917 in the wake of the first anti-conscription victory it was made a criminal offence to belong to the IWW....the ALP treacherously supported banning the IWW, despite the close association of many ALP members with the IWW in the anti-conscription movement. There was a mass imprisonment of IWW members, among them the legendary Monty Miller who had fought at Eureka and now went to prison at 86. The IWW regrouped, and was active again under its own name by 1921 but the political landscape had changed with the apparent success of the Bolshevik Revolution. The IWW was replaced by the Communist Party and widely declared dead. If dead it has nevertheless stubbornly refused to lie down and IWW groups continue in the USA and Australia and elsewhere.

Main Ref: Ian Turner's "Industrial Labour and Politics in Eastern Australia 1900-1921"