An Echo of Black Slavery: Emancipation, Forced Labour and Australia in 1933

Abstract

In 1933, the year of the Centenary of Emancipation and the ratification of the Forced Labour Convention at the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the condition of Aboriginal workers in Australia drew the attention of groups interested in ‘native’ forced labour in other parts of the world. Aboriginal workers, while formally excluded from international intervention as the domestic concern of a member nation state, were considered during discussions between humanitarian circles (specifically the Anti-Slavery Society in London) and a leading international lawyer working for the ILO in Geneva. The article argues that the terms of the exchange, with its focus on the provision of wages to non-European, Indigenous labour, should be read in the context of a heightened interest in ‘anti-slavery’ during that year in coincidence with renewed international publicity concerning the failure of ‘protection’ in Australia.

Notes

¹ See Christina Twomey, ‘Severed Hands: Authenticating Atrocity in the Congo, 1904–13’, in Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis, ed. Geoffrey Batchen, Mick Gidley, Nancy K. Miller and Jay Prosser (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), 39–50; and Christina Twomey, ‘Atrocity Narratives and Inter-Imperial Rivalry: Britain, Germany and the Treatment of the “Native Races”, 1904–1939’, in Evil, Barbarism and Empire: Britain and Abroad, c. 1830–2000, ed. Tom Crook, Rebecca Gill and Bertrand Taithe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 255–64.

² Andrew Porter, ‘Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery, and Humanitarianism’, in The Nineteenth Century, Vol. III, The Oxford History of the British Empire, ed. Andrew Porter et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 198–221.

³ Antoinette Burton and Tony Ballantyne, ‘Introduction: Bodies, Empires, and World Histories’, in Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History, ed. Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 1–15.

⁴ David Lambert, White Creole Culture, Politics and Identity during the Age of Abolition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 12.

⁵ See, for example, Deborah Bird Rose, Hidden Histories: Black Stories from Victoria River Downs, Humbert River and Wave Hill Stations (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1991). As Ann McGrath has pointed out, winning wages after strikes such as took place at Wave Hill in later decades was not an entirely positive result. See Ann McGrath, Born to the Cattle (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987).

⁶ See Anna Haebich, Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800–2000 (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2000); Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880–1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997); and Russell McGregor, Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal People and the Australian Nation (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2011).

⁷ Julia Martinez and Claire Lowrie, ‘Colonial Constructions of Masculinity: Transforming Aboriginal Australian Men into “Houseboys”’, Gender and History 21, no. 2 (2009): 318.

⁸ Mary Ann Jebb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare: A History of White Bosses and Aboriginal Pastoral Workers (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2002).

⁹ Fiona Paisley, ‘No Back Streets in the Bush: 1920s and 1930s Pro-Aboriginal White Women's Activism and the Trans-Australia Railway’, Australian Feminist Studies 12, no. 25 (1997): 119–38; Alison Holland, ‘The Campaign for Women Protectors: Gender, Race and Frontier between the Wars’, Australian Feminist Studies 16, no. 34 (2001): 27–42.

¹⁰ Alison Holland, ‘Feminism, Colonialism and Aboriginal Workers: An Anti-Slavery Crusade’, Labour History 69 (November 1995): 52–64, especially 58.

¹¹ McGregor, Indifferent Inclusion, 32.

¹² ‘Australian Sub-Committee’, 5 July 1933, Minute Book, 175. Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society Papers, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth & African Studies, Rhodes House, Oxford (MSS. Brit. Emp.) S22. G376.

¹³ Roderick E. Mitcham, ‘Geographies of Global Humanitarianism: The Anti-Slavery Society and the Aborigines Protection Society, 1884–1933’ (PhD thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2001), 199–201.

¹⁴ ‘Slavery. 5,000,000 Still in Bondage. Governor-General's Appeal’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 August 1933, 8.

¹⁵ ‘Slavery. 5,000,000 Still in Bondage. Governor-General's Appeal’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 August 1933, 8. On Anderson, see W. M. O'Neil, ‘Anderson, Sir Francis (1858–1941)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 7 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1979) (accessed online); Anne Coombs, Sex and Anarchy: The Life and Death of the Sydney Push (Sydney: Viking/Penguin Books, 1996), 3–9.

¹⁶ McGregor, Imagined Destinies.

¹⁷ D. Matas, ‘Prosecuting Crimes against Humanity: The Lessons of World War I’, Fordham International Law Journal 13, no. 86 (1989/90): 86–104. For a more recent comparison with Australian history, see Robert Manne, ‘A Turkish Tale: Gallipoli and the Armenian Genocide’, The Monthly (February 2007): 20–8. Thanks to Bruce Buchan for this reference.

¹⁸ Harris to Wilberforce, 5 January 1934, 2. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G376.

¹⁹ Mark Finnane and Fiona Paisley, ‘Policing on a Colonial Frontier: The “Borroloola Case” and the Limits of Rule of Law in 1930s Australia’, Law and History Review 28, no. 1 (2010): 141–71.

²⁰ Andrew Markus, ‘William Cooper and the 1937 Petition to the King’, Aboriginal History 7, no. 1 (1983): 46–60; Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus, Thinking Black: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines' League (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004); Bain Attwood, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1995); Jane Lydon, The Flash of Recognition: Photography and the Emergence of Indigenous Rights (Sydney: New South, 2012); Ravi de Costa, A Higher Authority: Indigenous Transnationalism and Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006); Fiona Paisley, The Lone Protestor: AM Fernando in Australia and London (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012), 166.

²¹ See, for example, Alison Holland, ‘“Whatever Her Race, a Woman Is Not a Chattel!” Mary Montgomery Bennett’, in Uncommon Ground: White Women in Aboriginal History, ed. Anna Cole, Victoria Haskins and Fiona Paisley (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005), 129–52; and Alison Holland, ‘To Eliminate Colour Prejudice: The WCTU and Decolonisation in Australia’, Journal of Religious History 32, no. 2 (2008): 256–76; Marilyn Lake, ‘Feminism and the Gendered Politics of Antiracism, Australia 1927–1957: From Maternal Protectionism to Leftist Assimilationism’, Australian Historical Studies 29, no. 110 (1998): 91–108; and Fiona Paisley, Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women's Rights, 1919 to 1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000).

²² Harris to Jones, 9 February 1934. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G376.

²³ ‘English Echo of Australian “Black Slavery”’, Sunday Sun (Sydney), 18 June 1933, 1.

²⁴ Peter Sherlock and Patricia Grimshaw, ‘One Woman's Concern for Social Justice: The Letters of Helen Baillie to Farnham Maynard, 1933–36’, in Anglo-Catholicism in Melbourne: Papers to Mark the 150th Anniversary of St Peter's Eastern Hill 1846–1996, ed. Colin Holden (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 1997), 85–98; and Fiona Paisley, ‘Jones, Edith Emily (1875–1952)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Suppl. Vol. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005) (accessed online, 7 October 2013).

²⁵ Mitcham, 52.

²⁶ Harris to Lefroy, 19 March 1934, 2. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G375.

²⁷ Paisley, The Lone Protestor, 121.

²⁸ Paisley, The Lone Protestor, 120–1.

²⁹ Curry was also the surname of the infamous superintendent of Palm Island in the 1920s, Robert Henry Curry. According to Joanne Watson, Robert was the second son of George Adam Curry, a Queensland compositor. See Watson, ‘Curry, Robert Henry (Bob) (1855–1930)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Suppl. Vol. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005) (accessed online, 29 November 2013). Thanks to Regina Ganter for suggesting this possible connection.

³⁰ ‘Items of News’, Kalgoorlie Miner, 21 January 1929, 4.

³¹ ‘Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society, London. Representation made at Deputation to High Commissioner, London, 13th November, 1933’. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G376.

³² Australian Committee, ASAPS, to J. A. Lyons, PM, 21 June 1935 and 6 March 1936. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G377.

³³ For a critical account of the role of the Anti-Slavery Society in North East Africa, see Suzanne Miers, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade as International Issues 1890–1939’, Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 19, no. 2 (1998): 16–37.

³⁴ Ben Silverstein, ‘Indirect Rule in Australia: A Case Study in Settler Colonial Difference’, in Studies in Settler Colonialism, ed. Fiona Bateman and Lionel Pilkington (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 90–105.

³⁵ Buxton to the President, British Association of Cape Town, 4 July 1929. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G374.

³⁶ Tom Crook, Rebecca Gill and Bertrand Taithe, ‘Liberal Civilization and Its Discontents: Evil, Barbarism and Empire’, in Evil, Barbarism and Empire, ed. Crook et al., 23. See also Zoe Laidlaw, ‘Investigating Empire: Humanitarians, Reform and the Commission of Eastern Inquiry’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, no. 5 (2012): 750; Alan Lester, ‘Obtaining the Due Observance of Justice: The Geographies of Colonial Humanitarianism’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20 (2002): 277–93; Thomas Laqueur, ‘Mourning, Pity, and the Work of Narrative in the Making of “Humanity”’, in Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy, ed. Richard Ashby Wilson and Richard D. Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 31–57; and Claire McLisky, ‘“Due Observance of Justice, and the Protection of Their Rights”: Philanthropy, Humanitarianism and Moral Purpose in the Aborigines’ Protection Society circa 1837 and Its Portrayal in Australian Historiography, 1883–2003’, Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies 11 (2005): 57–66.

³⁷ Fiona Paisley, ‘Mary Bennett and Chief Protector Neville: Protection, Absorption and the Future of the Aborigines’, in Contesting Assimilation, ed. Tim Rowse (Perth: API Network, 2005), 71–84.

³⁸ Elizabeth Elbourne, ‘The Sin of the Settler: The 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and Debates over Virtue and Conquest in the Early Nineteenth-Century British White Settler Empire’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 4, no. 3 (Winter 2003): np (accessed online, 20 October 2013); and Laidlaw, 749–68.

³⁹ Malcolm Allbrook, ‘“Imperial Family”: The Prinseps, Empire and Colonial Government in India and Australia’ (PhD thesis, Griffith University, 2008), 329.

⁴⁰ Jane Lydon, ‘Behold the Tears: Photography as Colonial Witness’, History of Photography 34, no. 3 (2010): 234–50.

⁴¹ For example, John H. Harris, Native Races and Peace Terms (London: Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society, 1916); and H. R. Fox Bourne, The Claims of the Uncivilised Races (London: Aborigines' Protection Society, 1900).

⁴² Mitcham, 62–3. See also Kevin Grant, A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926 (New York: Routledge, 2005), especially 159ff.

⁴³ Charles Rosenthal, letter to the editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 July 1933, 10.

⁴⁴ ‘Treatment of Blacks’, Argus, 24 July 1933, 9.

⁴⁵ Susan Pedersen, ‘Settler Colonialism at the Bar of the League of Nations’, in Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies, ed. Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen (New York: Routledge, 2005), 113–34; see also Susan Pedersen, ‘The Meaning of the Meaning of the Mandate System: An Argument’, Geschichte and Gesellschaft 32, no. 4 (2006): 560–82; and Susan Pedersen, ‘Modernity and Trusteeship: Tensions of Empire in Britain between the Wars’, in Meanings of Modernity: Britain from the Late Victorian Era to World War II, ed. Martin Daunton and Bernhard Reiger (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 203–20.

⁴⁶ Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). See also Daniel Laqua, Internationalism Reconfigured: Transnational Ideas and Movements between the Wars (London: I. B. Taurus, 2011).

⁴⁷ Neta Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 196–7. See also Porter, 198–221.

⁴⁸ Miers, 16.

⁴⁹ Miers, 16–37.

⁵⁰ Iwao Frederick Ayusawa, Director, International Labor Organisation (ILO), to the Prime Minister of Australia, no date. The reply from the Commonwealth government on 27 November refers to the ILO's initial request for information and was dated 2 May that year. ‘Native Labour—Australia’, ILO Archives, Geneva, File N206/1/4/0.

⁵¹ Abbott to ILO, 27 November 1929, ‘Native Labour—Australia’, ILO Archives, Geneva, File N206/1/4/0. See also Native Labour, Relations with the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society, London, John H. Harris, File N206/1/25/1; Native Labour, Correspondence with the Association for the Protection of Native Races, Killara, NSW, Revd W. Morley, File N206/1/4/4; Question of the Exclusion of Indentured Labour in Western Australia from the Workers' Compensation Act, File N206/1/4/3; and Protection of Black People in Australia, Correspondence with M. Ernst Bryce, Sydney, File N206/1/4/2—all held in the ILO Archives, Geneva.

⁵² Report of the Royal Commission into the Constitution, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, Vol. 2 (1929–30–31), 303.

⁵³ ‘Forced Labour in the Northern Territory’, National Archives of Australia, Canberra (hereafter NAA): A1, 1931/7727.

⁵⁴ Ronald Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 37.

⁵⁵ F. Van Lagenhove, The Question of the Aborigines before the United Nations (Brussels: Royal Colonial Institute of Belgium, 1954), 64–5.

⁵⁶ Andrew Markus, Governing Savages (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990), especially ch. 4.

⁵⁷ ‘Conditions of Aboriginals of Australia’, International Labour Review 21 (April 1930): 550–3.

⁵⁸ Bennett to White, October 1929. MSS. Brit. Emp. S19. D2/27. On Bishop White, see Ruth Teale, ‘White, Gilbert (1859–1933)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 12 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1990) (accessed online, 29 November 2013).

⁵⁹ M. M. Bennett, The Australian Aboriginal as a Human Being (London: Alston Rivers, 1930), 122.

⁶⁰ Bennett to Buxton, 2 June 1930. MSS. Brit. Emp. S19. D2/27.

⁶¹ Bennett to Nevinson, 7 June 1930. MSS Brit. Emp. S19. D2/27.

⁶² Bennett to Buxton, 6 December 1930. MSS Brit. Emp. S19. D2/27.

⁶³ Evelyn Shears to Harris, 17 June 1931. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G375.

⁶⁴ Revd Morley to Buxton, 11 November 1932. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G375.

⁶⁵ Weaver, Personnel File, Secretariat Section, ILO Archives, Geneva.

⁶⁶ Buxton to Weaver, 10 February 1933. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G376. The activities of Bennett and others from Australia became known to the ILO in other ways. During the 1930s, several files on ‘native’ labour in Australia were initiated in response to information sent directly to the organisation. ‘Protection of Black People in Australia. Correspondence with M. Ernest Bryce, Sydney’, File N 206/1/4/2; ‘Native Labour—Australia’, File N 206/1/4/0; and ‘Question of the exclusion of indentured labour in Western Australia from the Workers' Compensation Act’, File N 206/1/4/3. All from ILO Archives, Geneva.

⁶⁷ Buxton to Weaver, 12 February 1933. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G376.

⁶⁸ Buxton to Morley, 12 February 1933. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G376.

⁶⁹ Weaver to Harris, 26 March 1931. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G375.

⁷⁰ Compensation may have been a provision under the legislation of the early 1920s, but no accounts of accessing such a provision were provided by the former Japanese pearlers interviewed by Regina Ganter in her study of Aboriginal and Asian northern Australia. Thanks to Regina for this point. See Regina Ganter with Julia Martinez, Mixed Relations: Narratives of Asian/Aboriginal Contact in Northern Australia (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2006). For more on the history of Aboriginal-Asia contact, see Peta Stephenson and Christine Choo, eds, ‘Special Section: Indigenous Australian and Asian Histories’, Aboriginal History 35 (2001).

⁷¹ Weaver to Harris, 26 March 1931. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G375.

⁷² Harris to Shears, 22 June 1931. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G375.

⁷³ Harris to Shears, 22 June 1931. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G375.

⁷⁴ Harris to Shears, 7 August 1931, MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G375.

⁷⁵ Harris to Shears, 7 August 1931, MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G375. In his response, Weaver seemed ignorant of the removal of mixed-descent girls and their placement as young women in domestic service often at long distances and explicitly beyond the support of their family and community. However, the extreme vulnerability of Aboriginal women to sexual abuse had been noted by Bleakley in his report and was presumably known within the ILO.

⁷⁶ Weaver to Buxton, no date. ‘Native Labour in Australia’. ILO Archives, Geneva, File N206/1/4/0.

⁷⁷ Bennett to Buxton, 15 April 1932. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G382.

⁷⁸ Weaver to Harris, 8 August 1933. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G375.

⁷⁹ Travers Buxton to Sir Charles Rosenthal, APNR, 18 October 1933, 2. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G376.

⁸⁰ Buxton to Noel-Buxton, 9 October 1933, 3. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G376.

⁸¹ ‘Australian Sub-Committee’, 29 November 1933, n.p. Minute Book. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G376.

⁸² Harris to Morley, 29 December 1933, 2. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G376.

⁸³ Harris to Bennett, 23 October 1933, 3. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G376.

⁸⁴ ‘Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, London, Annual Meeting 1931’, ILO Archives, Geneva, File N200/10001/2.

⁸⁵ ‘Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, London, Annual Meeting 1931’, ILO Archives, Geneva, File N200/10001/2.

⁸⁶ ‘Native Labour. Relations with the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society, London. John H. Harris, 1920–1936 incl’, ILO Archives, Geneva, File N206/1/25/5.

⁸⁷ Rob Skinner and Alan Lester, ‘Humanitarianism and Empire: New Research Agendas’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, no. 5 (2012): 736.

⁸⁸ Ann Curthoys, ‘Indigenous People and Settler Self-Government: Introduction’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 13, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 1–5.

⁸⁹ McGregor, Indifferent Inclusion, 14–17.

⁹⁰ For example, William Cooper to Harris, 16 March 1937. MSS. Brit. Emp. S22. G378. Also quoted in Attwood and Markus, Thinking Black, 69.

⁹¹ ‘Dying Races of Australia: Petition to the King. “Blackfellows” in Need’, The Times, 25 November 1937, 15.

⁹² Paisley, The Lone Protestor, 166.

⁹³ Paisley, The Lone Protestor, 139.

⁹⁴ Letter dated 6 January 1955, Department of Labour to Department of Defence. Directorate of Legal Services: ILO Convention Force or Compulsory Labour—1932—Report as on Affecting Australia, NAA: A705, 68/1/733; Anna Haebich, Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950–1970 (Fremantle: Fremantle Press, 2008), 197–8.

⁹⁵ Rosalind Kidd, Trustees on Trial: Recovering Stolen Wages (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2006). With the help of Kidd's research in the records of Aborigines' Protection Boards, in May 2007 Aboriginal communities succeeded in bringing pressure upon the government to establish a Stolen Wages Task Force in Queensland. Inquiries followed in other states.