Abstract
The Victorian Labor Party came into being in the midst of the great strikes of the early 1890s, and in the shadow of a crippling economic depression that was to send trade unionism into retreat throughout Australia. This was the background against which the new party faced the task of establishing itself as an independent force in a colony where working-class electors had customarily looked to the middle class for political leadership.
In The People's Party, Frank Bongiorno gives a lively account of the infant Labor Party's attempts to find common ground between the competing demands of inner-city workers and farmers, Catholics and Protestants, trade unionists and disaffected liberals, teetotallers and boozers, socialists and feminists. He probes the sources of Labor's political language, and explores its lingering debt to a radical tradition that harked back to a golden age of manly independence and social egalitarianism. The Victorian Labor Party emerges from these pages as 'a process rather than a thing, as contested ground rather than conquered territory'.
In The People's Party, Frank Bongiorno gives a lively account of the infant Labor Party's attempts to find common ground between the competing demands of inner-city workers and farmers, Catholics and Protestants, trade unionists and disaffected liberals, teetotallers and boozers, socialists and feminists. He probes the sources of Labor's political language, and explores its lingering debt to a radical tradition that harked back to a golden age of manly independence and social egalitarianism. The Victorian Labor Party emerges from these pages as 'a process rather than a thing, as contested ground rather than conquered territory'.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | Carlton |
| Publisher | Melbourne University Press |
| Number of pages | 268 |
| ISBN (Print) | 0522847382, 9780522847383 |
| Publication status | Published - 30 Sept 1996 |