The People’s Procession is the celebration of Australian democracy in action. It stretches from the Eight Hours processions by exclusive craft unions in the 1880s to the all-inclusive Ban the Bomb rallies of the 1950s. Across these generations Australians voiced opinions on many issues through all manner of demos, pickets, parades and carnivals. And through letters, leaflets, newspapers, posters and placards they created a valuable cultural legacy, a people’s archive of social memory and political imagination. It’s a sweeping story of strife and celebration.

The People’s Procession was a celebration of the Noel Butlin Archives Centre. Rather than a history of popular movements, the exhibition is a showcase of highlights from the Archives. It is a unique repository of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ workings of individuals and organisations involved with popular movements rather than the annals of major political parties, government departments and commercial media.The exhibition was based around six themes:

• 888 – 8 hours work, 8 hours recreation and 8 hours rest;
• the emergence of trade unions;
• Common Cause—popular movements of the 1920s-1930s;
• Agitprop—agitation and propaganda in the 1930s;
• Class War in post-war Australia; and
• the Cold War and the peace movement.

‘If blood should stain the wattle’ Henry Lawson, 1891

8 hours work – 8 hours recreation – 8 hours rest

The Eight Hours anniversary procession was the biggest annual festivity in Australia between the 1880s and the 1910s. Unfurling the union banner for the procession was the prelude to unfolding the whole dramatic tableau of the labour movement. It symbolised the proud arts and traditions of labour and the respectability of its masculine, artisan origins.

The emergence of trade unions

In the 1890s the mine, shearing shed, cane field, logging camp and waterfront entered the Australian imagination as sites of egalitarianism—the bush legend. The ‘bush unions’ cultivated a new language of class, a combative spirit and a profound shift in Australian political culture. It was robust, racist, masculine and mad for power. With it came a new party of labour that brought the spirit of unionism into Parliament. As Australian working men and women entered the twentieth century, radicals, revolutionaries, feminists, utopians and unionists competed for their hearts and minds to lead the people’s procession.

Common cause

Depression, Fascism and War determined the defiant mood of popular movements in the 1920s and 30s. The catchcry ‘common cause’ bolstered the dispirited with a new symbol of defiance. It spread across neighbourhoods and nations—in bold posters, roneoed handbills, paper placards and printed banners. New and unlikely alliances were formed beyond the organised labour movement to find common cause with the unemployed and homeless or in protests against evictions and censorship.

Agitprop—agitation and propaganda

Agitprop was a new word coined to combine agitation and propaganda. In the 1920s and 1930s many artists and illustrators used print and photography to ennoble popular causes. This modern ‘intelligentsia’ was infused with optimism and action for a new art of social commitment. Free speech became a powerful issue to unite teachers, writers, artists, workers and students in the 1930s. But war brought disillusionment for many intellectuals. They turned inwards in despair rather than becoming the defiant vanguard of the people’s procession as they had imagined themselves.

Class War in Post-war Australia

The post-war years fostered a new boisterous working-class culture, strongly identified with Australian (male) identity. Call it bloke culture. At the same time the intensification of the Cold War and Prime Minister Menzies’ attempts to ban the Communist Party were the background to long and bitter industrial disputes. If a prolonged class war was enacted between Labour and Capital in the 1950s, there was also a renewed civil war within the labour movement. This brought a refreshing challenge to the dominance of class war polemics and politics from a new post-war generation of activists.

The Cold War and the peace movement

The threat of atomic war cast a shadow across all popular movements in the 1950s. Hence the peace movement dominated the political imagination of many groups. It brought them together as never before. The Cold War also exposed other wars of hot and cold—between the sexes and races. A new generation of women activists promoted women’s issues. Government assimilation policies also prompted Aboriginal people to speak for themselves with a new political confidence and cultural identity.