He continued to agitate for the revolution for some years, but finally he made his peace with parliamentary politics, and became a Labor Senator. The last of the Twelve, Donald Grant, at the time of writing was living in quiet retirement in Sydney. There was still the clear blue gaze into the future, the Scots burr and the fiery turn of phrase, the pride of bearing -- that made him a hero of his time, but his voice was no longer raised.

What made the men who played their parts in these extraordinary events -- the police and the Wobblies -- act as they did?

It is almost impossible to dig through a pile of police documents to the minds of the individual men behind them. Policemen are trained to report in formal officialese, and there is little in the police reports of anything else. In the IWW files, those reports which concerned political activities showed little sense of discrimination about the finer distinctions of political ideas and organisations. There were only the broad divisions -- the conservatives, who were beyond observation and above suspicion, for it was only change which was suspicious; the Labor Party, whose public propagandist activities sometimes came under police survey and some of whose members might fall into the category of “doubtfuls”; and the radicals and revolutionaries, who were one big bundle of sinister and dangerous elements who must be watched. The reports lacked human understanding, they were not concerned with situations or motives, but with acts.

None had the slightest touch of humour; they were all deadpan.[8] What then does emerge from these files? A conservatism that was quick to suspect radical agitation and anti-“patriotism”, and to associate these with moral turpitude and crime. A moralism that was quick to denounce criminality in conventionally loaded phrases. It is no wonder that the police were alarmed and affronted by the IWW.

How did this conservatism and moralism get along with the corruption and malpractice which undoubtedly existed in the force? Once again, there are no direct clues. One must assume that many members of the force applied a double standard -- that they thought of themselves not only as law-enforcers for the community at large, but as law-makers for themselves. For even when they were clearly in the wrong they showed no sign of recognising it. And, with a strong sense of solidarity, when one was accused his fellows covered up.

Perhaps this came from a sense of embattlement, of the law-enforcers in continuous war with those who break the law. War is a dirty business: the opponent respects no rules; so he must be fought with his own weapons. If he is guilty, then he must pay -- even if his guilt cannot be established by untainted evidence. And if a crime has been committed, but no guilt can be established, then someone must pay. There is a potential criminal for every crime. The preservation of society demands no less. The police are forced by their situation to do wrong that right may come.

Nevertheless, to frame a complicated case demands careful thought and meticulous planning. This is not something that can be done every day -- it must be kept for important occasions, as was the trial of the IWW Twelve. Here personal distaste and political environment combined to encourage the police to act. The hope of personal gain was probably not a major motive; rather this was seen as a job that, in the situation, had to be done.

Between the police force and those who supervised and directed their work in the Government and those who judged it from the bench, there was a complex relation. It was the job of the police to do what they had to do and then conceal it; it was the job of their political and judicial superiors to pretend that this was not done. But this was an unacknowledged agreement. Law enforcement is based on violence; it almost necessarily involves malpractice; and many of those who take part in it are touched by corruption. Yet none of this can be admitted by Government or Bench, because to do so would be to undermine an institution on which the power of judges and politicians depends.

Between the police and the Wobblies, there was that strange love-hate relationship of which Dostoyevsky wrote. They were in such close contact, they knew one another so well, each side was preoccupied with the other's plans and motives and actions: this very intimacy made hate impossible. Yet they started from opposite premises, they served different gods. And so there was a nexus between them which could not be dissolved, for there is nothing more central to thought and emotion than one's closest enemies. Each man destroys those whom he loves -- and loves those whom he must destroy.

What of the Wobblies? Like the police, they were their own law-makers, but from more clearly defined premises. For the revolutionary, society is something that is external to him, operating against him in an oppressive and exploitative way. The law has no sanctity in its own right; it is not divinely ordained, and anything that is made by man may be unmade. Yet most revolutionaries live within the law -- perhaps because they fear the personal consequences; perhaps because they accept that even an unjust society is better that no society at all, and that change must come by persuasion rather than personal defiance.

But some do not, and among these were the Wobblies. They made contempt for the law a way of life; for them, this kind of direct action was the essence of revolutionary behaviour. Yet it was still a long step from striking, or speaking from a street corner soapbox or selling newspapers in defiance of the law, to the physical destruction of property or life.

What makes a man a nihilist? -- for there was a handful of nihilists in Australia. Anger, impatience, lack of faith -- whatever it is, it bites deep into men's souls, and leads them to destroy the symbols of injustice they see around them, believing that by destroying the symbols they are destroying injustice itself.

Yet they were not ordinary criminals. They destroyed not for themselves but for all men, not for greed or spite but for a dream. That is why men came to their defence -- even men who knew that they were wrong -- for beneath their error and their destruction were human hearts. The tragedy of the Australian nihilists was that what they finally destroyed was themselves and the cause they sought to advance.

The Wobblies harboured this element of nihilism because they were a loosely disciplined organisation with an undeveloped ideology, because they repudiated the law in theory and could not see why it should be respected in practice, because the syndicalist Utopia they preached had much in common with anarchism, and because the “propaganda of the deed” has always been one part of anarchism.

The Wobblies had been born of violence -- the naked, brutal violence of the war of the American classes. They had lived under the torment of injustice and bitter hate. And a few of them had come to live by violence and hate. But their movement was much more than this, and although it was as abhorrent to respectable trade union leaders and Labor politicians as to employers and conservatives, it was enormously attractive to many. Its members had a courage, a dedication, and a humour that were rare in the labour movement. Its promise of a future in which working men ended their exploitation and alienation by taking to themselves the industries they worked, and deciding among themselves the distribution of their product, gave hope to many minds and hearts. So that when entrenched conservatism and the whole power of the State sought to crush this movement by assimilating it to the actions and plans of its tiny nihilist minority, there were tens of thousands who came to its defence. Conservatism, by over-reaching itself, succeeded in doing what nihilism was unable to do -- to convert criminality into the class war; for what radical spirit could resist the cry from the depths of a movement whose members sang as if they meant it:

When the Union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun. Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one? But the Union makes us strong.

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might? Is there anything left for us but to organise and fight? For the Union makes us strong.

They have taken untold millions that have never toiled to earn But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn, We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn That the Union makes us strong.

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold, Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold, We can bring to birth the new world from the ashes of the old, For the Union makes us strong.

Notes:

1. The ingredients were common enough in the bush: phosphorus was used for poisoning rabbits, and carbon bi-sulphide in tanning hides. As evidence that the tactic of incendiarism was not unknown in the bush, compare this couplet from a bushranger ballad of the 1880s: "If poor Dan Morgan is cold in the clay, He has two friends called Bryant and May"; and this description of "the present social system of pastoral Australia", from Joseph Furphy's Rigby's Romance: "a patriarchal despotism, tempered by Bryant and May".

2. There is some-though not very satisfactory-evidence for this. Demanding an inquiry in Parliament in July 1918, T.D. Mulch said: “The trials were hurried on; and I ask that the Royal Commission shall ... ferret out the telegrams which passed between the State Crown Law Department and the Federal Attorney-General's Department with a view to bringing on these trials at an earlier period than would otherwise be the case. ... we want produced the telegram that Mr Hughes sent, and the telegram which, I understand, the Attorney-General sent.” The Attorney-General denied any such exchange. Mutch retorted: “I have it on the authority of a man who is in a public office. ... I am informed that telegrams did pass between Sydney and Melbourne.”

And Davis Goldstein, in his statutory declaration of July 18, 1918, said that, when he had expressed doubts about the wisdom of the projected raid on the IWW headquarters on September 23, 1916, “Turbet ... replied that instructions, coupled with requests from Melbourne, were to the effect that the raid was to take place immediately and that "something must be done".

I did not discover any such exchanges or instructions in the New South Wales files I examined; this, however, does not prove conclusively that no exchanges took place. Goldstein denied that Turbet had told him about any instructions coming from the Commonwealth Government; however Mr Boyce, Goldstein's counsel, recalled that at one conference -- probably on September 25 -- Goldstein had complained “that the police bad acted too quickly; that if they could have waited a little longer they would have bagged the lot”.

The Prime Minister's interest might perhaps be established by an entry in Detective Leary's diary for October 1: “Interviewing the Prime Minister who was desirous of communicating with the Inspector-General of Police”. Leary said in evidence that his visit to the Prime Minister had nothing to do with the IWW case -- but it was recorded in his notebook in the middle of the pages dealing with the case.

3. The fact that the first mention of the name “Andrew” seems to have appeared in some of the detectives' diaries a couple of days before this does not necessarily invalidate the suggestion -- all the detectives agreed that they often wrote up their diaries days after the event. On the other hand, “Andrew” was first mentioned in Fergusson's diary on this day.

4. Besant was suspected of participation in the forgeries. Perhaps he was picked up because the police had been unable to make this stick.

5. This could have been done by Davis Goldstein, Tom Pope, or one of the police.

6. This could have been done by Tom Pope or one of the police. (I should make it clear that I am not accusing Pope of framing Teen or Fagin; I am merely stating that, on the face of the evidence, it was a possibility which bore investigation. To the contrary, Pope's demeanour before Mr Justice Street was that of a genuine members of the IWW, and it was he who took responsibility for supplying the prisoners with their meals while they were awaiting trial.)

7. After this was written, I learned from Messrs W. Sutton and J. Harris of the Queensland branch of the Labor History Society that Bill Beatty was also alive and living in Brisbane. Messrs Sutton and Harris recorded Bill Beatty's reminiscences; these appear in Labour History, November 1967, but add little to this record.

8. Almost the only exception was a side comment in Detective Leary's notebook, dated October 9, 1916: “Good stuff for a novel.”

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