School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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    Picturing politics: cartoons of Melbourne's Labour Press, 1890-1919
    Booth, Simon David ( 2008)
    This thesis undertakes a comprehensive survey of the cartoons published in Melbourne's labour press from 1890 to 1919. Through an examination of the picturing of labour politics, this thesis points to the role of social recognition and collective identification in the formation of the political labour movement. It is argued that the key icons of the Worker and Mr Fat embodied an esteemed identity, a labour collective self, which subsumed different forms of labour movement politics and presented a number of claims for rights and social recognition. In addition, these icons relied on contemporary standards of masculinity to give respectability to labour's new form of politics. The criticisms made in the cartoons of the commercial press are examined. These criticisms help show how the idea of the public was employed in the legitimisation of the labour politics. The representations of politicians are also explored. Conservative politicians were shown as hopelessly mired in their own particularity. In comparison with depictions of the generic Worker, the cartoons were ambivalent in their representations of labour movement politicians and the Labor Party. The cartoons also tapped directly into the historically contingent and varied discourses of race and nation. The nation was always defined by its working-class characteristics and labour's enemies were shown as inimical to genuine Australian values. While the cartoons rarely treated race as a subject, they did employ it as a tool in presenting other issues, in particular class and political enemies. There was a consistent pattern of depicting enemies—the Fatman, or conservative politicians—as less than white. Finally, allegorical women were far more commonly depicted than actual women. By consistently using the female form to represent things other than women, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge women in their own right, the labour movement cartoons failed to recognise women as a valid subject of politics. It is argued that this points to a misrecognition at the heart of labour politics.