Raelene Frances

Is labour history dead

Cause for Power: The Official History of the New South Wales Branch of the Australian Labor Party. By Graham Freudenberg. Pluto Press in association with the New South Wales Branch of the Australian Labor Party, Sydney 1991. Pp. 297.

Green demons: Irish-Catholics and Muslims in Australian history

39 5 doth,

Gender, Skill and the Regulation of Labour Markets: Victoria 1890-1930

19 5 paper. A History of the Australian Labor Party in New South Wales 1891–1991. By Jim Hagan and Ken Turner. Longman Cheshire, Melbourne 1991. Pp. xiii + 301.

Australian prostitution in international context

24 9 paper. Bede Nairn and Labor History. (Labor History Essays, vol. 3). By Bob Carr el al. Pluto Press in association with the New South Wales Branch of the Australian Labor Party, Sydney 1991. Pp. vii + 81.

Women and Wage Labour in Australia and Canada, 1880-1980

9.95 paper. The Foundation of Labor. Edited by Michael Easson. Pluto Press in association with the Lloyd Ross Forum of the Labor Council of New South Wales, Sydney 1990. Pp. x + 82.

An affectionate tribute

9.95 paper. In the Service? A History of Victorian Railway Workers and their Union. By Eddie Butler‐Bowden. Hyland House, Melbourne 1991. Pp. xii + 180.

Lifting the Veil: The Sex Industry, Museums and Galleries

14.95 paper. Working Lives: A History of the Australian Railway...

Book Reviews : Feminism Confronts Technology

The twenty-first century has seen Australia affected by terrorism in an unprecedented way, with attacks specifically targeting its citizens in Indonesia, as well as its involvement in the ‘war on terror’. At the same time, Muslims have been increasing as a proportion of the Australian population, due both to immigration and to local births. Muslim communities in Australia have faced many challenges in relating to older-established Australian society in this context. This article examines current attitudes to Muslims in Anglo-Celtic Australia and traces the historical precedents for ethno-religious hostility. It explores, in particular, the parallels between current attitudes to Muslims and historical Anglo-Protestant attitudes to Irish Catholics and asks what lessons can be learned from this history.

'No More Amazons': Gender and Work Process in the Victorian Clothing Trades, 1890-1939

Peter Macarthy drew our attention to tbe critical role of unskilled labour in the mouvement towards the establishment of the Victorian wages boards. The reversal of the fortunes of male unskilled workers during the 1890s depression, be argues, provoked widespread sympathy both within and outside the labour mouvement and resulted in a broad coalition of political and industrial forces prepared to intervene in the labour market in the interests of the fair; living wage. While I would not wish to dispute the importance of the pressure generated by the unskilled, or suggest that there was no element of altruism in the support offered by craft unions for their cause, subsequent research has highlighted the ways in which skilled workers supported the wages boards for their own reasons and used the boards to pursue their own agendas. This article will therefore explore the ways in which skilled workers attempted to use the wages boards to protect the status of craftsmen by controlling the competition from women and boys. It will also assess the effectiveness of these strategies in the context of the changing market for female labour; arguing that the declining supply of female industrial workers in the early twentieth century was more important than restrictive wages board provisions in containing the competition from female labour.

Women and the Great War

Using examples from the history of prostitution in Australia, this paper examines the way in which the Australian discourse on prostitution can be understood as part of a wider, international concern with ‘the white slave traffic’ and venereal disease. These case studies are used to introduce a broader discussion of developments in the historiography of prostitution.