One of the many colourful and intelligent leaders the IWW produced
in its first brilliant incarnation in Australia was Montague Miller.
Monty was, by 1916 already a veteran of more struggles than most fit
into a lifetime - and still the shit was only just approaching the fan!
He had participated in the Eureka Stockade uprising; learned his
lessons from physical force chartists working as diggers around the
Ballarat mines; participated in the scandalising of proper public
opinion by promoting atheism with the Australasian Secularists;
participated in the scandalising the Australasian Secularists by
linking up with the Melbourne Anarchist Club; he organised unemployment
relief during the depression of the 1890's; helped, particularly in
Western Australia, in the formation of the Labor Party and the winning
it over to a socialist platform; left it in disgust when it achieved
government and made it apparent, more clearly than the arguements of
anarchists ever could, that governments never can and never will be
able to introduce social justice but will always be tied to the
dictates of property and power.
He was found guilty of criminal
conspiracy in Western Australia because he was a member of the IWW. He
was found guilt of being a member of the IWW in Sydney after we were
suppressed during World War One and, at the age of eighty years was
given six months with hard labour. He let his ideas evolve but kept his
faith in working folk and the power they hold to make society anew
right up to the end.
Thus it is good to see a booklet “Eureka
and Beyond: Monty Miller his own story” edited Vic Williams (110 pages)
and a smaller pamphlet also produced by Vic: “Monty Miller –
Revolutionary”
Monty was a carpenter and a rebel and a very
smart cookie indeed. The last decade and a half of his life was devoted
to promoting the IWW ideal. For Monty had turned towards the state
socialism that he hoped to see the Labor Party introduce because of his
despair of the noble ideals of anarchism ever being practicable. When
this State Socialism was shown to be even more impractical he
rediscover his hopes in the program of the Wobblies with its emphasis
upon using the union to build the new world in the body of the old
He
was never an apparatchik was Monty. Never was and never could be. What
he believed in he fought for with all his strength but he thought
everything through himself and his ideas were often tangential to the
IWW and to any organisation he joined and, I suspect, that could ever
exist. He was never anything other than his own person. He was, for
example, a devoted follower of the American transcendentalist
philosopher Emmerson. Also he was a bit weird about sacrifice. Monty
believed that the tree of liberty needed to be regularly watered with
the blood of martyrs. The epitome of this was his thinking upon the
Eureka Stockade where working men made a brave principled stand for
freedom and were cut down in a massacre by the state forces for doing
so. The state won by its usual modus operandi but, for Monty at least,
it was from the sacrifice of the defeated diggers at Bakery Hill that
Victoria came to trace its universal manhood suffrage, its unionisation
and the eight hour day. And note in his article on sabotage, printed
here, that sabotage is "the true law of retributive justice working
through the universe ..." Well my Karma ran over my dogma but it is
nice to see it thriving as well in the 1916 rebels as the 1970's.
It
is good, therefore to see a re-issue “Eureka and Beyond”. Between its
pages is a miscellany of writings by and about Monty. The first half or
so is taken up very much by fellow worker Miller’s tale of his own
early years including his participation in the defence of the Eureka
Stockade. It is not mentioned in the booklet but from reports in the
press at the time this is probably an extended version of the story he
put to the jurors on that hot afternoon in 1916 on trial for seditious
conspiracy. Monty’s take on that trial and the state suppression of the
IWW that followed also have their place in the booklet, together with
newspaper articles and reminiscences about him as well as a few other
of his own writings.
One of the things to remember when reading
Montague’s own words is that he spent over half a century as a stump
orator. He took his message to working people at thousands of occasions
indoors and out; rain, shine or police informers, and had a voice that
could move any halfway sympathetic audience to tears - but only when he
wanted to! His text reads better if, in the back of the mind, one
imagines it being delivered vocally. Nor, personally, would I take
every word as gospel.
All in all it is a fairly good buy. Do I
have gripes? Well yes, fairly minor ones. Chief amongst them is the
myth that after World War One the Wobblies or sometimes “the better
Wobbly elements” (or some such formula) all realised the new era
heralded in by the Russian Revolution and joined the Communist Party.
And the inclusion of the commentary by Norman Jeffery and Katharine
Susannah Prichard might seem to back up the misconception
As the
myth has some currency amongst left wing working people it is worth a
brief look. The author Katharine Susannah Prichard was a friend to
Monty in his last days and they naturally talked over the events in
Russia. She was convinced that, had he not been too sick to be asked,
Monty would have joined the fledgling Communists. I happen to think she
was right. I would give him about three years (generous estimation
this) before he either stormed out or got expelled for some deviation
or another. It is inconceivable, totally inconceivable, to me that
Monty would have stayed there much longer, supporting the Stalin years
and remaining a loyal friend of the Soviet Union through its Gothic
period with its state sponcered famines, Gulag’s, show trials, military
interventions in Eastern Europe and other events too well known to
mention. Admitted some fellow workers who ought to have known better,
did do just that. Norman Jeffery, whose recollections of Monty also
form part of the pamphlet, was one such. But, as historian Verity
Burgmann put it: “Most of those who remained (in the Communist Party)
were not seeking in a new organisation a continuation of Wobbly
principles and practices but making a break with their Wobbly past. By
remaining in the Party, these Wobblies changed themselves. Norman
Jeffery, for instance, recreated himself in the image of Communism and
became accepted by his fellow Communists. He claimed in 1960 that the
Russian Revolution left many of his colleagues in the IWW
‘floundering’.”
Well, no wonder really.
For most
Wobblies who joined the CPA the relationship was difficult, torturous
and short. The cultural shift from a democratic, rebellious and open
organisation to a closed, authoritarian and manipulative one was too
much; particularly when the party down played industrial unionism and
started indulging in electoral politics. When Jack Howie, communist
president of the of the Labor Council, asked, “then how can we expect
to capture the more powerful machine of the capitalist state?” former
Wob J. B. King replied: “One doesn’t want to capture a mad dog before
shooting it.” *1 And there it is. As with the Labor Party Monty would
have washed the dust from his feet and walked away. Governments never
can and never will ...
Ah but I also am an idealogue in my own
anti-ideological way and mayhap I am reading too much here. Best to
end, as Vic chooses to end, with a quote from Montague Milers pamphlet
“Labors Road to Freedom”. Clearly one of those things of which it might
be said: “Truer now than when it was written!”
“All roads
and paths that have been tried as the way out of the disabilities and
sufferings of the slave class have only led us into the quicksands of
delusion. They are now closed, and before us is the open highway, the
track which has been blazed by pioneers who have paid the penalties of
imprisonment and death. From the seeds of their martyrdom has sprung
and bloomed the tree of Liberty; it stands at the end of the open
highway and we can taste of its glorious fruit of social and industrial
freedom. Onward with the march, then, fellow workers! The road is
clear; it is that of the I.W.W., Industrial Unionism.”
It is
time that the IWW produced more of its own material about former
members. Apart from Monty's "The Passing of Parliament" we have nothing
by this former member. Until such time as this comes to pass, however,
“Eureka and Beyond” is much recommended.
“Monty Miller
Revolutionary” is a much smaller effort and in many ways is a summery
of the contents of “Eureka and Beyond” as Vic sees them.
“Eureka and Beyond” is available from Lone Hand Press, 38 Garling Street, Willagee, Western Australia, 6163 for $12
“Monty Miller Revolutionary” from the same address $2
*1
Verity Burgmann, Revolutionary Industrial Unionism: The Industrial
Workers of the World in Australia, Cambridge University Press, 1995
