
Fighting Back
The Politics of the Unemployed in Victoria in the Great Depression
Charlie Fox(Author)
Melbourne University Press
Published on 10. September 1996
Book
Paperback/Softback
1 pages
978-0-522-84901-1 (ISBN)
Description
Work for the Dole is not a new idea. It was introduced in Victoria in 1932 and became one of the battlegrounds of unemployed politics. The provision and administration of sustenance, relief work, eviction of tenants from their homes, the issue of free speech-these were the major issues confronting unemployed workers and their families and organisations, and they fought successive governments over each one. Written in a pleasingly clear and accessible style, this absorbing work shows how complex unemployed politics was, and situates it in the long history of agitation by unemployed workers. It takes issue with the prevailing historical orthodoxy that unemployed workers in Australia during the Great Depression were introspective, politically apathetic and concerned only with survival. It shows that, to the contrary, they were active, organised and remarkably successful in their aims. It also shows that government unemployment relief was as much a product of this agitation as it was of government policies and preferences. Yet the movement was always pulled in other direction; by the hunger and poverty of its members, by their need simply to survive, by the diseng
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Carlton
Australia
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 219 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
422 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-522-84901-1 (9780522849011)
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E-Book
06/2016
Simon + Schuster LLC
€14.28
Available for download
Person
Dr Charles Fox has been teaching in the History Department of the University of Western Australia since 1989, having studied and taught for several years in the History Department at the University of Melbourne. His previous books include Australians at Work (1989) with Marilyn Lake; Working Australia (1991) (winner of the 1992 Keith Hancock History Prize); Historical Refractions (1994); and Under Blue Skies (1996).