The spirit of Eureka lives on in our struggles!

Vanguard December 2010 p. 3

December 3 marks the 156th anniversary of the Eureka Stockade. It was white Australia’s first organised mass struggle of ordinary people against the oppressive British colonial authority, and for justice and democratic rights.

Symbolizing their rejection of British colonial authority, the rebellious miners created a flag based on the Southern Cross constellation. At the time, Melbourne’s Age correctly described it as “the flag of Australian independence”. Kneeling beneath the flag on November 30, ten thousand miners swore the Eureka Oath: “We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties”.

More than 20 nationalities were involved in the uprising, including Afro-Americans. Raffaelo Carboni, a revolutionary Italian leader, declared the flag “As the refuge of all oppressed from all corners on earth.” Many of the rebel miners were political and working class activists fleeing persecution in their own countries in Europe.

Fourteen diggers were killed and another eight died later from wounds when the colonial troops attacked a depleted Stockade early on the morning of December 3 (below). Although defeated in the short term, this was a part of important milestones in the transition from colonial autocracy to local self-government and progressive (for the time) bourgeois democracy that followed in its wake. Wide support for the just cause of the miners ensured that no jury would convict any of the thirteen “ringleaders” tried for the hanging offence of treason.

However, for the working class and the people, Eureka’s fight for a genuine people’s democracy, economic justice and sovereignty is not finished and continues today.

In common with all struggles against oppression since the emergence of class society, the Eureka Stockade showed that it is right to rebel against reactionaries.

It showed that organised mass defiance of injustice is a good thing. It is the spirit of rebellion and defiance in support of a just cause that constitutes the great historical legacy of the spirit of Eureka and its flag.

This spirit resurfaced when the Eureka flag flew above the armed shearers’ strike camp at Barcaldine in 1891 and when 86-year old Eureka survivor Monty Miller toured Australia in 1917 campaigning against conscription (below).

Port Kembla wharfies swore the Eureka oath in 1939 when defying Menzies’ order that Australian pig-iron be supplied to the Japanese militarists for use against the people of China. The spirit of Eureka and its blue and white flag continues in many struggles of working people. It flies in rural communities fighting against multinational mining companies operations destroying their livelihoods, health and the local environment.

The Eureka flag was prominent in Communist publications during Menzies’ attempts to ban the Communist Party in 1950 (see below). Many current veterans of the democratic struggles of the World War and Cold War eras joined as revolutionary youth the Eureka Youth League, formed by the CPA in 1941.

The spirit of Eureka lives on and gives a unique identity to the class struggle in Australia and to the anti-imperialist movement led by the working class. In every significant struggle by organised workers or by community and issue-oriented organisations, the Eureka flag surfaces.

(The late John Cummins, above, a Marxist-Leninist and leader of construction workers in Victoria, was prominent amongst working class activists who identified with the spirit of Eureka.)

Celebrations of the significance of Eureka to the development of democratic rights, and their defence, take place not only in Ballarat, home of the Eureka Stockade, but across the nation. Local governments in some cities fly the flag during Eureka Week in broad acceptance of Eureka’s pivotal place in Australian history. The reciting of the Oath becomes a part of celebrations.

The enduring Eureka flag flies over many workers’ struggle and the rebels’ oath is frequently recited during strikes and rallies. Eureka flags flew proudly during the 1998 MUA struggle and in the nation-wide struggles against WorkChoices, with the rebels’ oath recited by tens of thousands at mass rallies with clenched fists. It flies in all rallies against the ABCC and on many construction sites.

As the revolutionary movement with its guiding star of socialist red prepares for its ultimate tasks, the great struggles of the present for the defence of working class rights and for independence from imperialism are enjoined under the banner of the rebel flag of Eureka.

Long live the spirit of Eureka!


(Above: Spirit of Eureka stall at Melbourne's May Day march.)