1919 Townsville Meatworkers’ Strike

G’day comrades,

I’ve always been bemused as to why the TOWNSVILLE MEATWORKERS ‘ STRIKE of 1919 hasn’t got more attention from materialist historian’s (sic).

Especially since those 1919 meat workers armed themselves as soon as they realised the bosses had called up the boozh-wah state to one-sided use whatever naked class against class force deemed necessary to defeat them.

For decades now I’ve been trying to find an article, which I’d always believed to be part of book called “in the quest of the millennium” by Bill Davis but this week I come across it referenced as: “in the quest of the millennium” international socialist, 7 February 1920 by William Davis.

Notes of Bill Morrow about 1919 Meatworkers Strike

Jim Sharp

Contents

  1. Reprint of article from International Socialist 070220.pdf — The quest of the millennium” international socialist, 7 February 1920 by William Davis A brief article, two pages in length, from a 1955 Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union AMIEU Journal, headed “Working Class History: Townsville’s Bloody Sunday.” There seems to be no author listed for this article, but at the foot of it appears the following comments: “Reprinted from “The International Socialist,” official organ of The Australian Socialist Party, Sydney, N.S.W. February 7th 1920.
  2. Notes of W Morrow 1919 Strike.pdf — Three typewritten pages of Bill Morrow’s notes
  3. Strike.pdf—Jim Sharp’s handwritten notes about the 1919 strike (one page).
  4. Sunday Bloody Sunday

[Editor’s Note: thanks to Jim Sharp (AMIEU retired) and Craig Buckley (Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union AMIEU industrial officer) for this important part of meatworkers history.]

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