By Jim Moss
I then turned my mind to plans of immigration, with a view, at once, to increase the number of working hands and diminish the wages of labour. So wrote Edward Gibbon Wakefield of his colonisation scheme for South Australia.
But the workers protested and at a meeting of the Political Association at Gawler in 1859 a spokeman declared: 'It was the great mining shareholders and flockholders who were continually crying "more labour, more labour", but the interpretation was "lower wages, lower wages". This is a history for the people - the wage and salary earners, workers by hand and brain, men and women, and all who are interested in the story of South Australia.'
From small beginnings, trade unions developed leading to the birth of the United Trades and Labor Council in 1884, and to political action with the formation of the United Labor Party in 1891. The unity and cooperation of the labour movement has often been tested by divisions of craft, race, ethnic and religious prejudices, and the ideologies of a wider community.
This is a record of peaceful movements for reform, for the Chartist programme and a wider democracy. It tells too of strikes, the struggle against unemployment and poverty, the fight for shorter working hours to offset technological change and the defence of union rights.