Belmont, Vic: Neptune Press, 1979 ISBN 0909131406
There has been much written over the years about the skirmish at Eureka Stockade, on the Ballaarat goldfields in 1854. This event has been used by all sides of the political debate as a stalking horse, justification, or warning as to how and where this country can go wrong in dealing out justice and fairness to its citizens. Much of what is said is tendentious at best, downright wrong at worst, and even the location of the skirmish is cause for heated debate (in this writer's opinion the true location of the Stockade is forever lost to history, although undoubtedly somewhere not too far from the memorial site). Until recently however, the investigation into the lives of those who were important instigators and participants in the event was scanty.
The book under review was one of the first to try and gather together a life of the leader of the miners on that December day, Peter Lalor. Having myself gone to primary school on Bakery Hill - on a street named for one of the "rebels" - from my earliest years I participated in a school-child re-enactment of the events of the Stockade, and so for six years in a row I saw the brave Lalor (or the child chosen to represent him) take a bullet in his arm, hide from the marauding troops before being spirited away and saved, at the expense of an amputation.
Les Blake adds little to my knowledge of the events of 3 December 1854, but he does fill in some information about Lalor, especially his early years in Ireland: years that instilled in him a love of liberty and freedom, which he brought with him to Ballarat. The Lalor family, especially Peter's older brothers James and Richard, were involved in the Young Ireland movement and were often in trouble with the English authorities. Peter sympathised with them, but as the younger brother he did not have too much involvement while he was getting his education as an engineer.
Lalor, like many other Irishmen, came to Australia to find a better life, and like many others ended up at Ballaarat (according to Geoffrey Blainey, 1 in 5 Australians has a family connection to Ballarat, such are the numbers that went through this city during the Gold years). The Governor of Victoria, Charles Hotham, had little time for miners and their complaints, and his Commissioner in Ballarat, Robert Rede, along with Hotham, suffered from extremely poor judgement in their pursuit of licence fees.
Because, at heart, taxation was the cause of the rebellion. Forced at the point of a gun to pay a licence fee whether successful in mining or not, and without the ability to question this in a democratic fashion (only those who owned land could vote at this stage), there was bound to be a reaction when their fair complaints were dismissed by Hotham. The Ballarat Reform League was set up to try and push for settlement politically. Unfortunately Rede over-reacted and sent troops through the goldfields hunting for licences - shots were fired, and for some miners it seemed that the only way to protect themselves, their rights and their livelihoods was to resort to force.
While Lalor was sympathetic to some of the aims of the Reform League, he became the leader of the men at the Stockade owing more to being the man on the spot at the time, and his clear ability to be a leader. He certainly was fuming at the injustice of the miner's situation.
The savage repression of the rebellion shocked the wider public of Victoria, and the over-reach of Hotham in charging those captured with treason led not only to all those charged to be released but to the acceptance of many of the demands of the miners to have representation, and changes to the licence fee.
It was in this time that Lalor stood for, and was elected to, the Victorian Legislature. He spent most of the rest of his life there, ending up as Speaker of the House for many years. He also kept an interest in mining, owning shares in, and being on the board for, several mining interests in Ballarat, Clunes and Creswick. He in fact engaged in shady share dealings, and tried to screw down miner's wages by scab tactics. He also in his votes in parliament showed that he was more conservative than many would have thought given his involvement in the Stockade fight.
No man is a caricature, and Lalor certainly was not - his willingness to fight for freedom did not make him a revolutionary, or even a socialist. Blake's book is light on detail, but is a good starting place for a deeper look at this complex man.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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