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One Big Union. A History of the Australian Workers Union 1886-1994 MARK HEARN & HARRY KNowLES, 1996 Melbourne: Cambridge University Press pp. xiii + 377, A$45.00 By far the largest of Australian trade unions, the Australian Workers Union represents the best and worst traditions of trade unionism. At times heroically resistant to employers and capable of organizing industrial action amongst itinerant workers dispersed across an entire continent, the AWU also became a union that seemed to confirm the clearly iron-like nature of the law of oligarchy and the racially and sexually limited horizons of many who preached working-class solidarity. Mark Hearn and Harry Knowles have performed a splendid service to labor historians in providing the first comprehensive history of this union, and one which reveals not just the good but also the bad and the ugly.
Cast upon the sea of trade unionism as a fragment of its founding president, William Guthrie Spence, the AWU became the weighty anchor of the right-wing within the labor movement. Spence was the Samuel Gompers of Australian unionism, rejecting outright any radically militant strategies. But there were differences. Spence and generations of AWU officials after him avidly pursued parliamentarism and individual parliamentary careers. The AWU sought actively to extend its organizational power and influence through its links with the Australian Labor Party; and many leading AWU officials saw parliamentary representation as...