Unemployment and Politics in Western Australia

Historians have reached a rare unanimity about the impact of the 1929-33 depression on Australians. 'The depression experience,' writes R?ssel Ward, 'left a deep and perhaps permanent impression on Aus tralian attitudes. The spectacle of such widespread involuntary un employment, and even of actual undernourishment, in Australia . . . was not forgotten.'1 A. G. L. Shaw echoes him: 'The experience of the depression certainly burned deeply into the soul of the Australian public, instilling a determination that shall not happen again ... it remains the bitterest memory of a generation.'2 For P. H. Partridge, 'The depression . . . accentuated the conflicts and tensions of a society which even in easy times is notable for a particularly jealous factionalism and sectionalism.'3 Such consistency of judgment would take a good deal to overturn, and any researcher must consider the antics of the New Guard and their adversary Lang in New South Wales, the reports of arson and beatings-up in Queensland, the travaillings of the trade union movement in Victoria. But it is as well to remember Robin Gollan's comment

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• Assessing the responses of the unemployed to the depression of the 1930s∗

  Geoff Spenceley, G F R Spenceley•Journal of Australian Studies•1989

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