Labor Pains - Volume 1

In the 1890s the trade union movement in New South Wales began a serious attempt to create something quite new as what we now recognise as a modern political party. Labor Pains is the documentary story of the early years of the Australian Labor Party, a developing and detailed narrative told from contemporary press reports. The debate on the party's shape and future direction is uninhibited as leaders argue diverse points of view. Internal democracy ensures a remarkably consensual resolution of issues. The great political issues resonate a century later: racial stereotyping and immigration policy; free trade and protection; Australia's role in imperial wars. Many of the debating topics have a similar, familiar, modern ring: branch stacking; rivalry between branch members and trade union delegates; tension between members of parliament and the extra-parliamentary party; clashes between idealism and political expediency. Labor Pains climaxes in 1905 when the Australian Labor Party becomes the main opposition party in the New South Wales Parliament.