Australia S First Socialists

Many of Australia's first Fabians are known as legislators, priests, jurists, men and women of letters, diplomats, feminists and educators, yet few are recognised as Fabians. Until this book, little attention has been given to Australian Fabian thinkers, activists and organisations, and their long-term influence on Australian political and intellectual life. This book recreates the lives of the first Fabians in Australia, their political ideas and strategies, and presents their visions for society in a lively and entertaining way. It also explores the similarities between the Fabian Society's development in Britain and Australia. The book will fill a long-standing gap in Australian intellectual history and the history of early socialist movements in Australia.

For many Australian working men and women in the closing days of the nineteenth century, SOCIALISM IN OUR TIME was no mere slogan. The deepening economic depression cut living standards, increased class conflict and tested the newborn trade unions to breaking point. In this climate, the message of socialist agitators made sense of the experience of the most vulnerable: capitalism was doomed, socialism was not only inevitable, it was imminent. This is the story of a crucial time in the political history of Australia, told from the perspective of the agitators and their followers. By uncovering, state by state, the hitherto ignored faith and work of the 'tribunes of the people' and the organisations created by their working-class supporters, In Our Time challenges the accepted versions of the social and political ferment which gave rise to the labour movement and its parliamentary expression, the Labor parties.

Resistance is the first volume of a projected three volume history of the Democratic Socialist party and the youth organisation Resistance, which today constitute the main current of the Australian far left. This volume covers the tumultuous period from 1965 to 1972.