Hostname: page-component-5cf477f64f-tgq86 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-04T23:23:06.414Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why Don’t Working People Want to Be Working Class Any More?: Class Identity and Education in 21st Century Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Teri Merlyn
Teri Merlyn*
Affiliation:
University of Technology, Sydney
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Contemporary Australian workers appear reluctant to identify as working class. The article argues the inadequacy of structural explanations of declining working class consciousness, such as the claimed broadening and flattening of the middle class. Instead, it explores the interacting roles of economic conditions and worker education in the decline in workers’ class identification. The educational focus is on the decline of those informal popular education institutions that in Britain and Australia until the mid-twentieth century had aided the articulation and transmission of class identity through programs of literacy and literature, autodidacticism and political activity. Recent hard times have not been sufficient in themselves to trigger a revival of class consciousness, without the help of some vehicle of working class political self-education. The popular media have thus been able to step in, co-opting the icon of the independent battler — a non-collective symbol of traditional longing to escape oppression. Recent promising efforts to build a collective identity around the term ‘working people’ fall short of fostering class identification.

Type
Meeting Report
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , April 2007 , pp. 217 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Altick, R. D. (1957) The English Common Reader, A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900, University of Chicago Publishers, Chicago.Google Scholar
Ashbolt, A. (1984) ‘The great literary witch-hunt of 1952,’ in Curthoys, A., Merritt, J. (eds.), Australia’s First Cold War: Society, Communism and Culture, VI, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, pp. 153–182.Google Scholar
Bailey, D. J. (1983) Holes in the Ground, Queensland Coalminers in Struggle 1840–1890: A History of the Queensland Colliery Employees Union, Self-published, Brisbane.Google Scholar
Bell, D. (1973) The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Boughton, R. (1996) ‘Social action and emancipatory learning seminar: A reflection,’, Australian Journal of Adult and Community Education, 36(2), pp. 151–157.Google Scholar
Boughton, R. (2001) ‘The Communist Party of Australia’s involvement in the struggle for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s rights 1920–1970,’ in Markey, R (ed.) Labour and Community: Historical Essays, Wollongong University Press, Wollongong, pp. 263–294.Google Scholar
Bourke, H. (1988) ‘Social scientists as intellectuals: From the first world war to the depression,’ in Head, B., Walter, J. (eds.) Intellectual Movements and Australian Society, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, pp. 47–69.Google Scholar
Bradley, H., Erickson, M., Stephensen, C. M., Williams, S. (2000) Myths at Work, Polity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Burgmann, V. (1985) In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labour 1885–1905, Sydney, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney.Google Scholar
Burgmann, V. (1995) Revolutionary Industrial Unionism: The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Cain, F. (1993) The Wobblies at War: A History of the IWW and the Great War in Australia, Spectrum Publications, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Crosby, M. (2005) Power at Work: Rebuilding the Australian Union Movement, The Federation Press, Sydney.Google Scholar
Crowther, J. (2004) ‘“In and against” lifelong learning: Flexibility and the corrosion of character’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 23(2), pp. 125–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Docker, J. (1984) In a Critical Condition: Reading Australian Literature, Penguin Books, Sydney.Google Scholar
Donaldson, M. (1999) Real boys drink Moet: Schooling the wealthy, Rethinking Marxism Conference Proceedings, University of Wollongong, 12–13 Nov.Google Scholar
Evans, R. (1988) The Red Flag Riots: A Study in Intolerance, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia.Google Scholar
Evans, R. (1989) ‘Radical departures: Paul Freeman and political deportation from Australia following World War One,’ Labour History, Number 57, pp. 16–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gorz, A. (1985) Paths to Paradise: On the Liberation from Work, Trans. Imrie, M. , Pluto, London.Google Scholar
Gustav, K. H. (1985) The Literature of Labour: Two Hundred Years of Working Class Writing, St Martin’s Press, New York.Google Scholar
Jackson, K. ‘Popular education and the state: A new look at the community debate’, in Mayo, M., Thompson, J. (eds.) Adult Learning, Critical Intelligence and Social Change, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, Leicester, pp. 182–203.Google Scholar
Johnson, R. (1979) ‘“Really useful knowledge”: Radical education and working class culture’, in Clarke, J., Critcher, C., Johnson, R. (eds.) Working Class Culture, Hutchinson, London, pp. 75–102.Google Scholar
Kelly, T. (1970) A History of Adult Education in Great Britain, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar
Kiernan, C (1968) ‘Peter Lalor, the enigma of Eureka,’ in Labour and the Gold Fields, Canberra, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.Google Scholar
Kiernan, B. (1997) Studies in Australian Literary History, Shoestring Press, Sydney.Google Scholar
Lees, S., Senyard, J. (1987) The 1950s … How Australia Became a Modern Society, and Everyone Got a House and a Car, Hyland House, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Lyons, M., Taksa, L. (1992) Australian Readers Remember: An Oral History of Reading 1890–1930, Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Macintyre, S. (1998) The Reds, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.Google Scholar
McLaren, J. (1989) Australian Literature, An Historical Introduction, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Marx, K. (1954 [1887]) Capital, a Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production VI, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow.Google Scholar
Meaney, N. (1996) ‘“The yellow peril” Invasion scare novels and Australian political culture,’ in Stewart, Ken (ed.) The 1890s: Australian Literature and Literary Culture, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, pp. 228–263.Google Scholar
Merlyn, T. (2003) Writing revolution: The British radical literary tradition as the seminal force in the development of Adult Education, its Australian context and the life and work of Eric Lambert, unpublished doctoral thesis, Adult Education, Griffith University, Brisbane.Google Scholar
Moore, A. (1988) ‘A Nordenfelt at every woolshed,’ in Burgmann, V., Lee, J. (eds.) Staining the Wattle: A People’s History of Australia Since 1788, McPhee Gribble/Penguin Books, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Murphy, W. E. (1896) The History of the Eight Hours’ Movement, Melbourne, Spectator Publishing Company, (original copy held by the author).Google Scholar
Murphy, W. (various dates) Papers in the Working Men’s College Papers, MSS Set 189, and Trades Hall, Melbourne, MSS Set 308, Box 4 (13), Mitchell Library, Sydney.Google Scholar
O’Day, R. (1982) Education and Society, 1500–1800: The Social Foundations of Education in Early Britain, Longman, London.Google Scholar
Piore, M., Sabel, C. (1984) The Second Industrial Divide: Prospects for Prosperity, Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Rose, J. (1992) ‘Rereading the English common reader: A preface to the history of audiences,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, pp. 47–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santayana, G. (1905) Reason in Common Sense, Life of Reason, Vol. 1 Scribner’s, New York, p. 284.Google Scholar
Scates, B. (1997) A New Australia: Citizenship, Radicalism and the First Republic, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Shaw, M., Crowther, J. (1995) ‘Beyond subversion’, in Mayo, M., Thompson, J. (eds.) Adult Learning, Critical Intelligence and Social Change, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, Leicester, pp. 204–218.Google Scholar
Simon, B. (ed) (1972) The Radical Tradition in Education in Britain, Lawrence & Wishart, London.Google Scholar
Swindells, J. ‘Are we not more than half the nation? Women and the “radical tradition” of adult education, 1867–1919’, in Mayo, M., Thompson, J. (eds.) Adult Learning, Critical Intelligence and Social Change, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, Leicester, pp. 204–218.Google Scholar
Symons, B. (1995) ‘All-out for the people’s war: Communist soldiers in the Australian Army in the Second World War,’, Australian Historical Studies, 26, pp. 596–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taksa, L. (2004) ‘Education “from the working class viewpoint” versus “instruction in civic efficiency“: The Workers’ Educational Association, the Australian quest for national efficiency and struggles over citizenship,’ Proceedings of the Eight National Labour History Conference, Transforming Labour: Work, Workers, Struggle and Change, University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1963) The Making of the English Working Class, Victor Gollancz, London.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1994) Making History: Writings on History and Culture, New Press, New York.Google Scholar
Tressell, R. (1965[1914]) The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Granada, London.Google Scholar
Spence, W. G. (1909) Australia’s Awakening: Thirty years in the Life of an Australian Agitator, Australia: self-published, The Worker Trustees, London.Google Scholar
Vincent, D. (1981) Bread, Knowledge and Freedom, A Study of Nineteenth-Century British Working Class Autobiography, Europa Publications Limited, London.Google Scholar
Webb, J., Enstice, A. (1998) Aliens & Savages: Fiction, Politics and Prejudice in Australia, Harper Collins, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Webb, R K (1955) The British Working Class Reader 1790–1848: Literacy and Social Tension, London, George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Webb, R. (2005) ‘You could go to the Trades Hall and meet organisers: Labour precincts and labour women in interwar Sydney,’ The Past is Before Us, Proceedings of the Ninth National Labour History Conference, The University of Sydney, 30th June-2nd July, pp. 223–230.Google Scholar
Whitelock, D. (1974) The Great Tradition: A History of Adult Education in Australia, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Wilkes, G. A. (1981) The Stockyard and the Croquet Lawn: Literary Evidence for Australian Cultural Development, Edward Arnold Pty Ltd., Melbourne.Google Scholar