Editorial.

Shields, John

Welcome to the 101st issue of Labour History--and to the first of what I trust will be many high quality issues throughout the journal's sixth decade of publication. As incoming editor, I am immensely grateful to the journal's owners--the membership of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History--and to the members of the journal's Editorial Board and Editorial Working Party for entrusting me with this role and I look forward to upholding the trust and furthering the cause.

During its first half century of publication, Labour History has contributed significantly to key conceptual debates in the history of class, gender, race and industrial relations, social movements and social identity within and beyond Australasia. At times, it has been in the forefront of historically-informed debate and theory-building, and the increasing flow of thematic issues overseen by guest editors attests not only to the journal's collectivist ethos but also its willingness to engage with issues and events that speak as much to the future as to the past.

Inevitably, there are a variety of passionately held views about Labour History's current orientation and trajectory, and robust debate on the journal's focus and future direction is both welcome and reassuring. In the life of a journal such as ours there can be no malady more fatal that that of 'group think'. In my view, the journal's embrace of new 'ways of seeing' the historical experience of labour is a source of abiding strength, not a weakness or ideological infidelity. This is a journal which has thus far succeeded in providing an outlet for solid research in the domain, whether the focus is on structure, struggle and agency, or on text, identity and meaning. The various academic and activist groupings within our community of readers and contributors may subscribe to competing ontological and epistemological worldviews but Labour History welcomes high-quality scholarship irrespective of tribal affiliation--and that is one of the journal's core strengths as a scholarly publication. Labour History's continued influence, I would submit, is attributable, above all else, to the effectiveness with which it has accommodated new paradigms and balanced competing agendas and conceptual frames.

What is undeniably true is that the journal, the Society to which the journal belongs, and the institutions and social formation within which the journal and the Society are embedded, have all changed dramatically over the past half century--and will almost certainly continue to change at an accelerating pace. The journal itself has changed substantially since it first appeared, in January 1962, as the Bulletin of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. It has moved from print-only to print plus PDF; from linotype to on-line production. The empirical and conceptual foci have shifted substantially over the decades. The Society has given rise to half a dozen branches, branches with their own bulletins, bulletins which are vehicles for activist voice. Simultaneously, within the wider world, the labour movement--the journal's founding social constituency--is in organizational decline--at least within the developed capitalist world--whilst other movements of social protest are on the rise.

So new challenges and opportunities now present themselves. Within the academy, the teaching of labour history is under increasing threat from the commodification of education and the pressures of a narrowly-defined regime of research 'performance': for both academics and the journals in which they aspire to publish. Those of us currently charged with stewardship of the journal must play the post- 'ERA' era game as effectively as possible to ensure that the journal maintains its place within the university structure and consolidates its reputation and ranking. Then there is the challenge of catching up with the rest of the journal world in terms of moving to on-line submission and refereeing--and reaping the benefits that this offers.

Concerns about the fate of the domain and the journal are understandable but also overwrought and the opening of the journal's sixth decade presents us all with an appropriate opportunity for robust dialogue about Labour History's future direction. What could be done differently--or perhaps better--in the years ahead? The coming decade is bound to witness further fundamental changes in the nature of journal publishing, in the nature of working life and the work of work, and in the nature of the academy and academic knowledge work.

Recently, the members of the journal's Editorial Board participated in a refreshingly candid discussion on-line regarding possible changes to the journal's publishing 'mission'. Debate of this type is essential to the journal's future and I look forward to the publication of an agreed, revised statement of editorial policy in the next issue. As I see it, we can and must do more to encourage our authors to engage with existing theoretical debates and to explain more clearly to our readers why their research really matters. At the same time, and following the example set by History Workshop Journal, I believe that it is essential that the journal publish solid reflective pieces, historically-informed opinion pieces and non-refereed research notes as a means of maintaining faith with the voices of labour activism. Let me emphasise, though, that these suggestions are not offered with a view to marginalising any pre-existing or additional themes.

Notwithstanding the challenges that are before us, there are some very encouraging signs. As the conference report published elsewhere in this issue suggests, the scholarship on display at the Society's recent biennial conference, hosted by Melanie Nolan and colleagues from the Society's Canberra Branch, was proof positive of the strength and diversity of research being undertaken within the field both within and beyond Australia.

The articles in this issue also give cause for confidence, not least because this is a non-thematic issue shaped by the interests and energies of individual authors and because its content reflects the empirical and conceptual breadth and depth upon which the journal's future can be assured.

The issue opens with three regionally-focussed studies of labour and conflict in mining and extraction. In their innovative lead piece examining photographic images of the epic Broken Hill industrial battles of 1909, 1915-16 and 1919-20, Paul Adams and Erik Eklund propose that these images must be seen not simply as visual registers of struggle but as weapons of industrial warfare in their own right; as instruments of radicalisation and mobilisation, and catalysts of militant localism. Drawing on previously unexamined sources, Beris Penrose examines the class politics and public policy failure associated with Australia's earliest epidemic of silicosis--on the goldfields of late colonial Victoria--and the advent of the 'reckless worker' stereotype; a discourse of denial that set the precedent for health and safety policy inaction for decades to come across the mining and construction industries. In her piece on the marginalisation of trade unionism and the emergence of company unionism at Electrolytic Zinc, Tasmania, between 1920 and 1948, Ruth Barton's investigates the complex long-term interplay between the arbitral state and participative management practices in the process of industrial relations change at workplace level in this iconic processing site linked intimately to ore production, capital ownership and management strategy on Broken Hill's 'line of lode'.

Using a combination of archival, pictorial and oral material, and combining frameworks from Indigenous and women's studies, Maria Nugent's piece on decorative shell work in the Sydney coastal region provides rare and invaluable insights into continuity and change in Aboriginal women's work over the century to 1970 and into the economic and social significance of this work. To me, Nugent's study is emblematic of the journal's value as a vehicle for pushing the boundaries of inquiry in the domain of labour and social history

Likewise, the six contributions that complete the suite of refereed offerings in this issue attest the range and richness of scholarship in the field. By reframing the New Australia settlement's fracturing and failure as a consequence of an underlying shared belief in white racial superiority, Stephanie Mawson's article invites us to move beyond explanations grounded in William Lane's authoritarian proclivities. In their study of workplace industrial relations at the Yarraville Sugar Refinery, 1890-1925, Charles Fahey and John Lack show how the logic of welfarism was ultimately revealed for what it was--a 'silent form of coercion'. While very different in flavour, the contributions by Malcolm Saunders/Neil Lloyd and Michael Hess, illuminate intriguing aspects of trade union structure, strategy and politics prior to and during the Cold War. Shedding new light on a hitherto little-researched union, Saunders/Lloyd offer a nuanced and persuasive account of the anti-communist and collaborationist orientation of the Amalgamated Engineers in South Australia, while Hess provides a detailed account of the struggle between Left and Right for control of the Tasmanian Liquor Trades Union during the 1970s. Building on his previous work in Labour History, Nathan Wise applies an industrial relations framework to chart the class tensions within the Australian military during World War I and to suggest that 'digger identity' and egalitarianism should be understood in terms of class rather than nation. The anchor piece, by Linda Colley, invokes historical evidence from the Queensland context to demonstrate the cyclical contradiction between the relaxation of youth recruitment policies and the ageing of public service workforces. Colley's study is proof positive that when it comes to the myopia of employer policies attracting, retaining and renewing their human capital is no less pronounced in the public sector than in the private. In both sectors, the more things change the more they remain the same.

So there you have it: a rich range of articles; articles which, taken together, traverse issues, themes, concepts, debates and evidence that are widely varied in space and time and yet in clear harmony with the journal's essential brief--the publication of scholarship that advances our understanding of the historical experience and agency of organised labour and those who labour.