The Lone Wolf’ in Sheep’s Clothing? Maurice Blackburn, the Australian Labor Party and the Limits to Mateship

Maurice Blackburn, hero of the 1916–17 anti-conscription campaigns and scourge of the Wren-machine, effective industrial legal counsel and assiduous parliamentary representative, was expelled from the Australian Labor Party for a second time in 1941. Heir to a middle class heritage, Blackburn had grown up in genteel poverty. The former gave him a powerful sense of personal agency, the latter an identification with the poor and underprivileged which led him first to socialism and then the Labor Party. Though widely respected and admired, he was also distrusted by some for his intellectualism, for his background and, ultimately, for his willingness to put principles above Party. In the culture of the labour movement, a complex intermingling of ‘mateship’ with ‘solidarity’ formed the foundation of its industrial and political power. It was a force for cohesion - individual working people knew they counted little when standing alone - but also for exclusion - as class traitor or ‘lone wolf’. Yet for some, Blackburn’s exclusion elevated him to the status of Labor saint. His long and complex relationship with the labour movement offers a rich opportunity to explore the language and experience of mateship, solidarity and class in the period 1912 to 1944 and its continuing resonance in contemporary politics

Agency (philosophy · Communism · HERO · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Social science · Socialism · Sociology · Solidarity · Working class · Australian History and Society · Gender Studies · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

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