The Eureka movement that gave birth to Aussie labour - The Irish connection

Few small countries can claim to have had as big an impact on the world as Ireland has had. When thinking of the Irish diaspora individual historic figures such as John F. Kennedy, Che Guevara (Lynch) or Ned Kelly spring to mind, but Irish people as a community have also impacted on the development of societies, and none more so than Australia.

Today in Australia, there are thousands of individuals proudly wearing a flag which, to them, represents the birth of democracy in their country. It represents the fight for a just and fair society that the first free settlers endured and it represents the power of the collective over the oppressive powers that ruled the early colony.

Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) members
in Queensland proudly display the Eureka Flag

That flag is the Eureka flag and it is an emblem that is synonomous with the Irish.

It was first raised in 1854 by an Irishman in a small town called Ballarat in regional Victoria.

At the time, Ballarat had become one of the biggest gold mining towns in the world. The Irish, including some who had left home during the Great Famine, sought a better life in Australia flooding the gold fields of Victoria along with many Britons, Canadians, Americans and Chinese.

By 1854 there were about 25,000 gold miners in the Ballarat gold fields and law and order was enforced by the Gold Commission’s police force. There was growing unrest over the deeply unpopular mining licence imposed on all miners irrespective of whether they were successful in their pursuit of gold.

This was particulaly difficult for the small miners who struggled to pay and led to them establishing a code name as a warning call for when the inspectors came to check their licenses.

This warning call was ‘Vinegar Hill’, a reference to to the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the 1804 Irish convict rebellion in Castle Hill (nicknamed Vinegar Hill) near Sydney. What compounded the unrest was the denial of a vote to the miners, despite the imposition of a tax through the mining licence.

The miners were also very concerned with the level of corruption that was taking place around the goldfields and this came to a head after a Scottish goldminer was beaten to death by a mob.

The mob included the local publican, James Bentley, who just happened to be a friend of the local magistrate and he escaped prosecution, as did the three other men in the group.

This led to a mass meeting of up to 10,000 miners, during which, the crowd burnt down Bentley’s Hotel. Soon after, three of the diggers were arrested and charged for their role in the arson attack.

On 11 November, 10,000 miners met to demand the release of the three diggers along with the abolition of the licence and the vote for all males.

The outcome of this meeting was the formation of the Ballarat Reform League which passed the following resolution, "that it is the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called on to obey, that taxation without representation is tyranny".

This was followed by another mass meeting held on the 29 November where the miners decided to publicly burn their mining licences.

In response, the Gold Commissioner ordered a licence hunt for the following day at which eight defaulters were arrested. According to records, military resources were summoned to rescue the arresting officers from the angry crowd.

Later, on the 30^th November, there was another mass burning of licenses, this time led by 26 year old Co Laois man Peter Lawlor.

Lawlor was the brother of Young Irelander James Fintan Lawlor; the Young Ireland revolutionary.

James Fintan Lawlor was one of the most powerful writers of his day and who later influenced the likes of Michael Davitt, James Connolly and Padraig Pearse.

It was at this meeting on Baker Hill that the famous Eureka flag was flown for the first time. 

The original Eureka flag from 1854

The flag has five stars representing the Southern Cross and Professor Geoffrey Blaney claims that the white cross behind the stars “really [is] an Irish cross rather than being a configuration of the Southern Cross.”

Lawlor, along with his fellow demonstrators constructed a stockade enclosing about a half acre where the following oath was taken beneath the flag: "We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties."

Historians have said that as well as most of the miners inside the stockade, in the area around where the defensive position was established, the miners were overwhelmingly Irish. The password to enter the stockade was again, “Vinegar Hill.”

Early on the morning of Sunday 3 December, the authorities launched an attack on the stockade.

The miners were outnumbered, with the colony sending backup from Melbourne, and the battle was over in 20 minutes.

A total of 22 miners - mostly Irish - and six troops were killed. The flag was torn down, trampled, hacked with swords and peppered with bullets by colonial troops. Peter Lawlor escaped with serious injuries and his arm was later amputated.

Of the 120 miners detained after the rebellion, thirteen were brought to trial, of which seven were Irish.

They were: Timothy Hayes (Irish), James McFie Campbell (a black man from Jamaica), Raffaello Carboni (Italian), Jacob Sorenson (Scottish), John Manning (Irish), John Phelan (Irish), John Dignum (Australian), John Joseph (a black American), James Beatie (Irish), William Malloy (Irish), Jan Vennick (Dutch), Michael Tuohy (Irish) and Henry Reid (Irish).

Memorial to the fallen at the Eureka stockade

The first trial was of John Joseph, one of three Americans arrested, but the US Consul intervened in the other two (John Joseph was a black man). When Joseph was found ‘not guilty’, there was a sudden burst of applause in the court room and he was carried around the streets of Melbourne in a chair of triumph. All of the other men were also acquitted to great public acclaim.

The Gold Fields Commission handed down its report a month later, and the government adopted all of its recommendations.

This resulted in all the demands of the miners being met.

A bill was passed to extend the vote to golddiggers possessing a miner’s right costing one pound (it had previously been eight pounds along with six months residency). The hated Gold Commission was replaced by a system of mining wardens.

Peter Lalor, leader of the Eureka Stockade.

In 1855 Peter Lawlor was elected as the first MLC (Member of the Legislative Council) and the Ballarat miners were given eight representatives on the council.

The Eureka rebellion is considered by many to be the birthplace of Australian democracy. It is the only example of armed rebellion leading to reform of unfair laws.

Today the Eureka Stockade symbolises a “revolt of free men against imperial tyranny, of labour against a priviliged ruling class and as an expression of republicanism.”

Many trade unions and trade unionists, particularly in the construction sector, proudly wear the flag today and it is always on display from the roof of the Victorian Trades Hall building in Melbourne, where the very first legislated eight hour day in the world was won one year later, in 1856.

The connections between Ireland and Australia are, and always have been very strong.

According to James Connolly’s Labour in Irish history, the penalty for joining a trade union in Ireland after 1802 was transportation to Australia.

The spirit of those early Irish settlers is still strong in the labour movement and the impact they had on Australian society is still very visible today. 

An Australian worker wearing trade union insignia's including the Southern Cross flag