Unemployed Workers Movement, Newtown, 1931, attempting to stop an eviction
Issy Wyner (1916-2008), a member of the Unemployed Workers Movement https://oralhistories.moadoph.gov.au/issy-wyner-1916-2008
"The Brunswick branch of the UWM was set up in 1931 and operated out of the Proletarian Hall, which was located in Lydia Street. At its peak the organisation claimed to have 7000 members and 26 branches located around the state." @AusUnemployment has twice that many members
The Unemployed Workers Movement ran a soup kitchen in Brunswick for the children of the unemployed and held dances and cheap entertainment to raise funds https://wikinorthia.net.au/lock-out-the-landlords-proletarian-hall-and-unemployed-organising-in-brunswick/
Unemployed Workers Movement 1931 demonstration demands: raise the rate, fresh food, free school books, no evictions and a rent moratorium, no discrimination between single men and women, freedom of demonstration, abolition of vagrancy laws
I really need to get my hands on the 1975 Masters thesis by Nadia Wheatley at Macquarie Uni: 'The Unemployed Who Kicked'
Bankston eviction, where the Unemployed Workers Union fought the police: two UWM members were shot but almost all (of the 17 carried out of the cottage) had suffered serious head injuries and other body wounds (The Sun, 18 June 1931, p. 16.)
Nine who faced court over the Bankston incident were Diggers, ten aged in their thirties and forties, six had recently joined the Communist Party of Australia and each had been out of work for nearly two years. Most were married with two or more children http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ANZLawHisteJl/2007/2.pdf
Oh lol this reminds me of ALP rusted-ons who were accusing AUWU members of "stealing" milk crates to sit on http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ANZLawHisteJl/2007/2.pdf
Waratah Council dismissed complaints about the Unemployed Workers Movement https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/136581890?searchTerm=unemployed%20workers%20movement
So all the minutes of the meetings of Unemployed Workers' Movement, 20 January 1931 - 1 September 1932, and minutes of meetings of One Big Union of Unemployed, May 1928 - 31 July 1929 are held at NSW State Library. They're not digitised and not published
Trove also has what it titles 'Ephemera' from the Unemployed Workers' Committee Movement, Brisbane of 1931. A folder of notes and documents. Also not digitised and not published anywhere
Interviews conducted by Michael Roper with participants in unemployment movements in the Footscray area during the 1930s are held at State Library Victoria. Not transcribed, not available online, and unavailable at present for request
The Unemployed Girls Relief Movement (1930 - 1932) was founded by Muriel Heagney and Jessie Henderson in 1930. Heagney died in poverty in St Kilda.
Heagney's work was carried on by Zelda Aprano, one of the three women who founded the Women's Liberation Centre on Little Latrobe Street in 1972 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelda_D%27Aprano
TOCSIN was the name of the official journal of Balmain Unemployed Workers Movement. Thanks to @takvera for preserving these images. The name may sound familiar: it's now used by a journal produced by a ALP right-wing think-tank http://www.takver.com/history/myunion/myunionp16.htm

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/200-for-36-pages-labor-mps-sit-on-board-of-think-tank-they-used-public-funds-to-support-20180405-p4z7ww.html
"The unions didn't want have anything to do with the unemployed because they can't pay union dues and are not of any use to them. They were no use to the boss either because he couldn't make money off them." Jim Munro on the Unemployed Workers Movement in the 1920's and 30's
"Things weren't going too well so the Government decided to cut out the sustenance. Instead of getting an order to use at the Grocer you got a sugar bag, a 70 pound hessian bag, with groceries in it. Well we objected. The first day we refused to accept them."
"We held meetings to clear the flak, picketed the place and wouldn't let anyone in. So nobody got sustenance that week. The same thing happened at Fitzroy, at Richmond, at Port Melbourne and there was hell to pay for a while."
"There were big riots down at the Richmond Town Hall and a whole number of people arrested. One of them was Steve Bagley who was the first to build a real unemployed organisation in Richmond. He got jailed over it."
"None of us had boots, we were getting around nearly bare footed. The men got an issue of army boots, the women were a bit unlucky, they wouldn't wear army boots so they had a special shoe made for the women that was almost as bad as an army boot. It was heavy."
"We got that issue once a year. Then they found out they had thousands of army uniforms left over from W.W.1 and figured that this was a good opportunity to get rid of them. So they gave them to the unemployed."
"So the first week we were all working around in the tunic. So then the Returned Services League (RSL) kicked up a row. "What an insult to the Army that this scum can walk around the streets in an army uniform." So they stopped it and had them all dyed black and reissued to us."
"Well that was the best thing they ever did because wherever you walked and saw someone in a dyed army tunic you knew he was unemployed and you spoke to him. So it helped us develop our organisation."
"Every unemployed group had its own meeting place - a little hall or a shop. We'd have all sorts of speakers on different subjects. We also held street meetings in a different suburb each night. At one point we started having meetings at Swanston Street on a Friday night."
"We used to have alot of marches from Trades Hall and we had to be smart about it because the police always knew what we were going to do, they had their snoopers amongst us."
When THC and UWM marched together to Parliament House: "We were told they had two machine guns in place and that we had no hope of getting inside. They started getting riled up and one copper went for a fellow with a baton."
"I had never seen an Inspector move so quickly. He ran up and knocked that copper over and the baton out of his hand and said "You bloody fool, do you want to get all of us killed." That was how the police were that day and it shows how things change when you have numbers."
"There was a chap who lived in Brunswick, an ex Waterside worker and he went to jail seven times for chalking up slogans. He could hardly read and write and some of his slogans had very strange spelling, but it didn't matter because his heart was in it."
"Alot of us went to jail. I remember one time 33 of us were in Pentridge at the same time."

Imagine going to jail with 33 of your comrades from the Unemployed Workers Movement, all in there at the same time together...
In prison: "We want to be treated as political prisoners and not criminals." At that time you were only allowed a letter once a month and they denied there were any political prisoners under English law."
Can I just say: thank you @takvera for preserving so much of this content - it would no longer exist without your work
Jumping back a generation to 1889, John 'Chummy' Fleming. "The unemployed meeting was held on a piece of land near the Workingmen's College. At the conclusion of the meeting, old John White and I carried the calico banner which had written on it: 'Feed on our flesh and blood,"
"Capitalist hyena; it is your funeral feast'. When the unemployed arrived at the Trades Hall they were attacked by unionists. During the fight the banner was destroyed. The police came and ended the fight ..."
Fleming was expelled from the Trades Hall Council in 1904, "...ostensibly for disloyalty, but in reality for being independent minded and espousing anarchism."
"His unionist conscience role went into high gear in 1890 when he opposed Trenwith, who was quickly rising to leadership of the emerging Victorian Labor Party, about working conditions, and accused the moderate THC bureaucrats of 'working with blood-sucking capitalists."
"It is possible that he was unemployed because of blacklisting through a lot of this period."
"His politics certainly made him invaluable to the 'Out of workers', but a thorn in the hands of Trades Hall officials and opportunist 'labor' politicians who apparently failed to see the connections between trade unions and the unemployed." Tones of the AUWU and the ACTU
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